


Silence is the Most Powerful Scream

by awkwardacity



Category: Supernatural, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, BAMF Lydia Martin, Banshee Powers, Bullying, Chimeras, Death, F/M, Human Experimentation, Minor Stiles Stilinski/Malia Tate, Nightmares, POV Multiple, Pack Feels, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Dean Winchester, Purgatory, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 06:45:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4596864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardacity/pseuds/awkwardacity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> She remembers tracking the Dread Doctors into the wood. She remembers them forcing her to her knees. The sharp pain, stinging just behind her ear. The click of the syringe. The cold flood to her brain. Her vision clouding silver, somehow still alive.</i><br/><i>She remembers her last scream for one last death: her own.</i><br/><br/>In which Lydia dies at the hands of the Dread Doctors, ends up in Purgatory, and runs into Dean, Cas and Benny.</p>
<p>[Currently rewriting]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lydia I

_Because I could not stop for Death_  
_He kindly stopped for me_  
_The Carriage held but just Ourselves_  
_And Immortality._

She wakes screaming, her vision clearing with a burst of white light. It's freezing, and she has to shrink into herself, wrap her arms around her knees, just to stop the shivers running through her body.

It takes her a moment to get her bearings. She's in the woods somewhere, but they look nothing like Beacon Hills Reserve. Everything seems bled of colour, as if she's living in her very own sepia-toned movie. She looks down at herself and sees that she's wearing her favourite dress - slightly too short, flowery and blue, with a white collar. Her shoes are slightly high-heeled boots, coated completely in mud and something that looks all too much like blood. Her tights are torn to shreds at the knees, ragged and dirty. Her strawberry blond hair is loosely braided, and as she runs her fingers through it she can feel that it is sticky, and her hand comes away red and silver.

Silver.

Desperately she tries to think back to what happened before she blacked out; it all comes back in a sudden rush, and she is unable to retain her horrified gasp. She remembers everything. She remembers reading the book. She remembers the flashbacks. She remembers tracking the Dread Doctors into the wood. She remembers them forcing her to her knees.

The sharp pain, stinging just behind her ear. The click of the syringe. The cold flood to her brain. Her vision clouding silver, somehow still alive.

She remembers her last scream for one last death: her own.

Choked sobs wrack her body and she curls in on herself. She's dead. The words go around her brain and for once, though all the facts are present, her mind refuses to accept them. She simply sits there, rocking herself back and forth, trying to wrap her head around it and failing. If she was counting she would know it takes her a full day before she's coherent enough to move again, but she isn't. She also has no idea, yet, how much of a miracle it is that she is still intact after that amount of time.

Eventually she realises she's getting nowhere pitying herself. "Pull yourself together," she whispers to herself. "Come on. What would Stiles do?"

That thought brings a small smile to her face. She can almost imagine Stiles standing right beside her, tugging at her to get up. "Come on, Lydia," he'd say. "We've got to go. We've got to find a way back. I don't care that we're dead, so don't give me that look. It's our responsibility to help them. We've got to do this."

Laughter bubbles up past her lips, and though she knows it's hysterical it's a comfort to hear _something_ among the eerie silence of the trees.

Feeling far more motivated than before, she stands up and takes in her surroundings with an analytical mind. As far as she can see or hear she is the only person or creature nearby, and the forest goes on further than she can fathom. Wherever she is, she's sure it isn't Heaven; to be honest she is a _little_ disappointed - she's always kept an open mind about where she might end up. Then again she also knows she's done things in her life that are far from good.

At least it isn't Hell. Or at least, she hopes it isn't. What if this is her forever? Alone in an infinite forest, lost and wandering for the rest of her days? She shudders, and this time it isn't from the cold. Suddenly she can see how this might be Hell.

She shakes her head to clear it. That's no way to go about thinking things until she has explored every possible option. To distract herself she scans the landscape one more time, and suddenly notices something on the floor. It's a piece of red clothing, and she can feel her heart speed up instinctively, because she recognises it.

It's Stiles' hoodie.

Her hands reach out for it, shaking, and she snatches it up from the ground and pulls it to her face, inhaling it. It smells of him - in fact it's still warm. She holds it closer, as if clinging to a possession of his will keep him closer. She remembers how she shivered on the way to the forest, how he took off his hoodie and gave it to her without a second thought. She remembers his screams as the Dread Doctors injected the mercury into her brain, drowned out only by her own-

"Shut up!" she screams out loud. Her hands fly to her ears as the woods shake with the force of her scream. Her breath comes out in short sharp bursts as she presses her fingers against the needle mark behind her ear, and the pain gives her clarity.

It's strange, she realises. She has all the wounds she died of, and yet she's pretty sure that there isn't mercury encasing her brain. She probably wouldn't be able to think, talk or breathe if that was the case. However, she _is_ dead. The rules are different here.

The sound of footsteps, fast and heavy, snaps her from her train of thought. Strangely she doesn't feel any fear. She figures that since she's dead, there can't be much worse that can happen to her. If she's honest, there is a small part of her that is _glad_ she's dead; it's better than letting the Dread Doctors experiment on her. Tracy, Donovan, Hayden...their fates are worse than death.

She slips herself into Stiles' hoodie, immediately feeling like she's wrapped in his arms, the warmest and safest place she has ever found in the world. She slips her hands into the deep pockets and her heart stills as her fingers brush sharp metal. She withdraws her hands to find herself holding a knife.

"Stiles," she whispers. "What did you do?"

Though she can feel her heart both sinking and stopping at the thought of why Stiles had a knife, she is instantly grateful for it. The blade looks to be pure silver, glinting in the cold, washed out sunlight of this hellhole. The ivory grip is familiar in her hand, and she flashes back briefly to the times she spent with Allison, training in physical combat. She hopes Allison isn't trapped in a forest like this.

The footsteps are closer now. She runs to the nearest tree and hides behind it, holding her breath. She can't take any chances.

The footsteps belong to a man a few heads taller than her. He's dirty and ragged, and snarling like a feral animal. It reminds her of Peter. The man runs past her tree only to halt a few metres ahead, sniffing the air. She stays frozen, whether from fear or instinct she has no idea.

A few seconds later he turns straight to her.

It seems like they stare at each other forever. She scans him instinctively, looking for a weak spot and trying to identify his species. His mouth is full of fangs, his claws sharp, his posture ready to pounce at any moment. As she watches him he, on the other hand, seems to be deciding whether she is worth the fight.

It seems that she _is_ worth eating, because suddenly the moment is broken and she is being charged at by a huge, growling monster.

Her body acts before her brain has time to think. She surges forwards to meet him, and the blade pushes in front of her, sliding through flesh and past bones to lodge in his rib cage. He stumbles back looking mildly surprised, and she feels a small amount of vicious triumph. He falls to the ground on his back, still.

The forest seems quiet again, but the blood is pounding in her ears so it's hard to tell. She lets go of a breath she doesn't realise she was holding, trying to steel herself. If this is her life now, for the rest of eternity, then she has to get past her guilt and get past it fast. She has to ignore the good angel on her shoulder - otherwise known as Scott McCall, her alpha. He's always been strict with the pack about not killing - a sentiment she agrees with up to a point, but she feels like that's down the drain now.

She reaches forward and pulls the knife out of the body, turning to clean the blade on a leaf or something, and before she can overthink her decision she takes off running in a random direction, trying to put as much distance between herself and her first kill of many to come.

* * *

She remembers her life in piercing clarity. It's strange to think how quickly she accepts this hell - her afterlife - as her new reality. Before she died everything was a mix of complicated decisions with more than a million possible answers and a billion possible outcomes. Here there are two choices: fight or die.

She chooses to fight, and after the first few days the good angel on her shoulder stops talking. Maybe because it's so horrified of what she's done that she has shocked it speechless. Or maybe it's because that good angel never existed, and this way of living has just given her a single-minded purpose; her head is finally filtering out all the crazy hallucinations.

Whatever reason it is, she's glad it vanishes quickly. Those first few days really are hell. Her conscience screams at her to stop, to think, to slow down. To find a logical approach - maybe even find an escape route, because her pack needs her. _Stiles_ needs her.

Thankfully those thoughts die with the good angel. There is no way back from death, she thinks - and that _is_ the logical response. Sh may be disrespecting every value her pack stands for, but she is also surviving. She has never been one to lie down and take it. She will fight. She just needs to do that until the others inevitably go the way she has, and until then she doesn't plan on finding out what's on the other side of dying twice.

She remembers how Allison's coping mechanism for overwhelming emotion was to feel nothing at all. To seal everything behind steel shutters, hiding from the horrors of the world, whilst she herself felt nothing. It was her best friend's own, twisted form of invincibility.

She knows she's doing the same thing - pushing herself further away from the increment of humanity her death left her with; she just can't bring herself to care.

So she doesn't.

* * *

It's about a week later - she's jogging through another stretch of forest, a dead siren left in the dust a mile back - when she finds herself suddenly confronted by three men.

Her instincts immediately kick in, and she lifts Stiles' blade - _her_ blade - to defend herself, her eyes scanning each one of them.

The first one is clearly the leader of the three, and also the dirtiest. He's covered in so much blood and grime and black goo that she knows he must have been here for months. His clothes are ripped and torn, and he looks as if he hasn't been out of them since he arrived. His jaw is set, his eyes hard and cold and startlingly green. But other than that he seems - _human_.

The second is covered in less gunk, but he stills has that haunted look. His most noticeable feature, however, is the set of razor sharp teeth he's showing off, stained slightly red from a fresh kill. He looks on the verge of snarling, but he is clearly waiting for the leader's signal.

The third is the strangest of the three. He wears a beige trench coat which is surprisingly clean, though the rest of him is dirty. His eyes and face are far less cold than the other two. There's an almost peaceful look about him, an aura telling her he is not the enemy; though she can feel in that aura an immense power far larger than anything she's seen before.

Every instinct she has is telling her that this is a fight or flight situation, and neither option looks like it will do anything other than kill her. She'll go down fighting, she decides. That way she can know she did everything she could, and maybe she can even feel a little proud of herself.

Except these are the first creatures who haven't approached her snarling and spitting. The first ones who haven't been driven mad or given in to their primal instincts. And that's what makes her hesitate.

"Who are you?" she demands, brandishing the knife. The sound of her own voice falls strangely on her ears, maybe because she has never gone so long without hearing it before.

"Question ain't who, sweetheart," the second guy says, a smirk twisting his features. It's not an endearing smirk like the one ever-present on Stiles - when he's not angsting at the world - but a cold, jagged smile that chills her to the core. "It's _what_."

"Back off, Benny," the leader snaps, and both she and his companions turn to look at him. He points in her direction. "What sort of creature do _you_ know of that uses a knife when it has freakin' claws and fangs?" She notices that he also has a knife, stained multiple times over red and black. But he's putting it away, slowly, as if trying not to spook her. "What's your name?"

"My name?" she asks, not sure if she's heard right. "Why would I tell you my name?"

"Okay then. Fair point. I'm Dean. This," he points at the creature, "is Benny. The guy in the trench coat is Castiel."

She's still wary, but lowers her knife a little. "Lydia," she answers, and she's surprised by how level her voice sounds. "My name's Lydia."

"Okay, Lydia. How long have you been here? In fact, how did you get here? If you're human then you must have been forced through somehow, like me."

"I have no idea how long I've been here. Not very long, I think." She doesn't lower her knife any further, and she doesn't correct him when he calls her human. From the looks of him he's a hunter, and she's met enough - Gerard and Kate, namely - who shoot first and don't ask questions later that she knows not to let her guard down. "How'd you get here?"

"An exploding Leviathan," he shrugs, like it's no big deal. The name flashes something in her memory, and she recalls a page from the bestiary about them. Ancient creatures, one of the first creations of God, trapped in Purgatory forever.

Purgatory.

The middle ground between Heaven and Hell.

Supposedly the place all creatures go when they die.

"Shit," she gasps. "We're in Purgatory, aren't we?" She lowers the knife now, tucking it into the belt of her dress.

The leader - Dean - gives her a confused look. "You know about Purgatory? Are you a hunter?"

"A hunter?" she scoffs. "Are you serious? No, I'm not."

"Then how do you know about the supernatural?"

She hesitates a second. "Let's just say I have some friends, and leave it at that."

Dean squints at her, scanning her intently as if trying to read more into the answer she has given, and stalks up closer to her. "If you know about Purgatory, do you know how you got here?"

Stiles' scream echoes in her ear, the sinister clicking of the Dread Doctors, the ghost of the cold flood to her brain. Before her eyes she no longer sees Dean, but the dark woods of Beacon Hills. She sees Stiles being held back by a chimera - she doesn't recognise who they used to be. She feels one of the Dread Doctor's hands on her shoulders, keeping her on her knees. She sees Theo standing in front of her, a cruel smile matching hateful eyes, taunting her. She's let the pack down. They're all going to die, and it's her fault. The needle presses behind her ear, pushing through the skin, and the liquid metal fills up her head, forces its way out of her eyes, ears, nose, mouth-

"Lydia! Lydia!" the cry breaks through her trance, and suddenly she's back in the forest of Purgatory. She is on her knees, shaking and sobbing. Dean is crouching beside her, hands on her shoulders, shaking her. "Lydia! Are you okay?"

"Uh-" she stutters, shaking her head to clear it. "Y-yeah. I'm...I'm fine."

"I asked you what happened and you just blanked out."

"Well, yeah." ' _Sarcasm is my only defense_ ,' she remembers Stiles quoting his younger self to her one evening, and she suddenly realises what he was really trying to say to her. Not his only weapon from monsters, but his only protection from the world. Now she finds herself in the exactly the same mind-frame, and it scares her. "Recalling how I died is a bit of a traumatic memory, y'know?"

Dean looks taken aback.

"Yes, I _know_ I'm dead."

"How'd you die?" the fanged creature - Benny - asks curiously, and finally his teeth revert to human.

She points to the spot behind her ear. "Mercury to the brain."

"Ouch."

"Tell me about it."

"Who did it to you?" Dean asks, still searching her face. She reaches up to check if there's something on her face, and feels the now-solid metal running in frozen silver tears from her eyes.

"Oh. Well that sucks."

"Who?"

"What's it to you?"

"I'm trying to figure out how the hell you got here."

Lydia chews her lip. She doesn't want to give up the charade that she's just an ordinary human being, for fear of being re-killed. What happens to monsters if they die after death anyway? Oblivion?

She knows how hunters react to liars, yet she can't bring herself to voice the truth. She feels like if she corrects him, admits out loud that she is _not human_ then the last of her humanity will die with it.

She takes a deep breath, steeling herself again. "The Dread Doctors."

"The _Dread Doctors_?" Dean scoffs. "What sort of name is that?"

Fury bubbles up inside her, and all of a sudden Lydia realises that she has been holding in a scream ever since she got here. It desperately claws at her vocal chords now that she knows it's there, and she has to make a physical effort to push it down. She must have been so focused on running during the past week that she hasn't had the time to notice it.

The scream signals death, and she's _dead_. For all she knows, if she starts screaming she might never stop. She squeezes her eyes shut.

" _Breathe_ ," Stiles' voice says in her ear. " _Come on, Lydia. You just need to keep calm. Find your anchor_."

She breathes again, and when she opens her eyes the scream seems to have disappeared - for now. She looks up to Dean. "They're nothing to laugh at. They're parascientists who came to my town to carry out experiments on teenagers to create the perfect supernatural creature by non-supernatural means. They made monsters we called chimeras - you know, a mix of more than one creature - and set them loose on the town."

Dean is silent, his jovial expression suddenly grim and serious. She gets the feeling that children in danger is a sore spot for him. Feeling a little guilty at playing on his weaknesses, she stops talking and simply stares at him expectantly, waiting for the silence to break.

"If they were messing around with people's brains that could explain why you're here," he offers as a deduction, and Lydia nods, trying not to let the relief she is feeling show too blatantly. She can sense the gaze of the trench-coat guy - Castiel? - burning a hole in her, and instantly she knows he isn't fooled. He catches her eye and in that second it feels like he is flicking through her life like it's a well-read novel.

"I'm sorry for your loss," he says, his voice lower and gruffer than she expects. He gives her a look which almost reassures her, like he's trying to tell her that her secret - for whatever reason - is safe with him. A smile pulls at the corner of her lips.

"So, I've given you my life story," she turns back to Dean. "Do I get to know anything about you?"

"I'm a hunter, I spent forty years in Hell, and I fully intend on getting out of here. Any more questions?"

Lydia is momentarily speechless. When he says _Hell_ , somehow she doesn't think he's just being figurative. "Uh, yeah. What species are your friends?"

"Vampire," Benny introduces himself, and Lydia has a hard time not flinching. Werewolves she can deal with; as far as she seen they're mostly peaceful. But she was never one of those girls to go through the vampire romance phase, and frankly the idea of them terrifies her more than kanimas.

She shudders and turns to Castiel, shying away slightly from Benny. "You?"

"I'm an angel of the Lord." Castiel says. If not for his totally serious expression, she would probably laugh at him.

She shakes her head again. "Fine. I've seen crazier." Dean gives her a weird look, like he can't imagine what she's seen that can compare to real live angels dressed like tax accountants.

"Dean," Castiel cocks his head to the side. "We should go. I can count two Vetala and a Wendigo approaching from the North and East respectively."

Dean nods and begins to stalk off past Lydia. The three men haven't made it far when Dean turns back to her. "You coming?" he demands impatiently. "Or do you want to be monster chow?"

And just like that Lydia is part of their team.


	2. Dean I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy, please review!  
> Warning: descriptions of torture in this chapter.

  _They say pain is an illusion_  
_This is just a bruise_  
_And you are just confused_  
_But I am only human_

 

 

It's been a month since he picked up Lydia and Dean is still utterly confused. He may have been in Purgatory for seven months now, but she is by far the most mysterious thing he has encountered.

It's not just the fact that she's here in the first place, which is impossible enough in itself (he get's the feeling that she's leaving out huge chunks of the story, but he lets it slide). It's more the fact that with every situation she manages to surprise him.

She already told him that she knew about the Supernatural before her death, but she has enough knowledge on the subject to rival Bobby. When they're attacked by a creature which appears half lizard, half man, with paralytic venom that freezes Benny up for a full three hours, he's at a loss as to what the hell it is, despite everything he's seen.

Lydia calmly informs them that it's a kanima, the result of a werewolf bite on a person with an unresolved past. When it's dead she pulls a vial from seemingly nowhere and collects the venom; it worries him how she knows exactly where to get it from.

Her combat skills stun him too. He remembers how extensive his and Sammy's training with their father was before they were any good at either weapons or physical combat, but both skills seem to come naturally to this girl. When they are attacked by a horde of vampires, his instinct is to push her behind him, but she immediately pushes back and runs into the mass of creatures fearlessly. He nearly gets himself killed when he finds himself distracted, watching her fight; she makes it look more like an art form, a complicated dance routine she's practiced a thousand times as she twirls, ducks, slashes, stabs.

When she loses track of her knife in one of the many corpses she's taken down it doesn't even slow her down. She jumps almost impossibly high, flipping midair and landing on the shoulders of one of the vampires. Then with a complicated twist she pulls herself - and it - downwards, through its legs until its crumpled on the ground, whilst she's standing above it not looking even slightly out of breath.

The she stamps its face in.

Her brutality scares him. He gets the feeling that she's compartmentalising, not thinking about what she has killed, or the number of bodies she has left behind. Its what he had to do, before he got himself into the mindset he has now, unhealthy as it is. _Monsters are monster. Not human at all_. It's the mindset which made it impossible not to kill Amy, Sam's kitsune friend. Though he has to admit that, since meeting Benny, his perspective is beginning to change.

He can't pretend he hasn't seen Lydia's scars. She winces when she doesn't think anyone is looking, and he knows it's because of the deep, barely healed gash on her side which must have occurred shortly before her death. He has seen the huge scratch scars on her torso - probably werewolf, he thinks - and the faded bruised line ringing her throat which can only be from strangling. The girl's body is a map of painful reminders dating back at least a couple of years.

He wonders just how bad Lydia's life must have been before she died. She's only seventeen, for God's sake.

Since she was so open about how she had come to Purgatory when they first met, he hopes that she might give him some insight into how she got into the supernatural world, but she keeps that to herself. She won't tell him her origins, or who her 'friends' are, or how she knows about kanimas and other such things.

She's like a mystery, an enigma, and the key to unlocking her was swallowed a long time ago.

* * *

After a month and a half of hunting with her, trying to find the gate out of this hellhole, Lydia realises that all of them take turns on watch when they stop to rest, but that he's been leaving her out of the schedule. He's stoking the fire Cas angel-ed into existence, fantasising over thoughts of the junk food he no longer needs as sustenance, when she comes storming up to him with an armful of firewood, a thunderous expression on her usually sarcastic or calm features.

"What the hell, Dean." She throws the firewood down at his feet, crosses her arms and looks at him expectantly. He shrugs, unsure of what he's done. "I'm not a child!" she explodes. "I may be the youngest here but I am _not_ a child. So don't treat me like one. Put me into the watch rota tonight or so help me God I will kill you."

That night he ends up taking the shift with her. Benny is asleep a little way away from the fire, and Cas has gone off to scout out the surrounding territory, despite Dean's worry that the angel will vanish on him again. Meanwhile he and Lydia sit by the fire in tense silence. Earlier that day they killed a werewolf, and Dean notices that Lydia has been quiet ever since. He isn't quite sure how to approach the teenage girl who in less than a month has become like a daughter, and a source of awe, to him.

"So what's up with the werewolf?" he asks, deciding to be direct. She flinches at the word, fiddling with something on her right middle finger. He looks closer to see it's a ring; made of black stone, two rings conjoined by a thin line. Simple but elegant, and clearly holding a lot of memories. He can't believe he's never noticed it before.

"What do you mean?" Lydia has a brilliant poker face, but somehow she can't quite put it into place this time. Her voice is tense and edgy.

"Today, with the werewolf. You looked..." he hesitates, not wanting to be on the receiving end of her temper, "kinda disappointed."

"Just wasn't what I was expecting," she mumbles, refusing to look at him. He stares into the fire, trying to dissect her answer.

"You met many werewolves in your time?"

Lydia's laugh is humourless. "You could say that. Beacon Hills was overrun with them."

"Beacon Hills?" He's never heard her mention the name of her home town, and it rings a bell. "Beacon Hills. I've heard that before somewhere. Something...something to do with a really old hunting family?"

"The Argents." Her voice is quieter, but he can sense a tumultuous mix of emotions under those two words.

"Yeah." He tries to dredge up any information he can remember about the Argents, to keep the conversation going; this is the most open she has ever been with him. "They have a code of some sort, apparently."

"Two codes, actually. The original one was a load of crap, but the newer one...was something I could agree with." It's hard not to notice the pride in her tone as she speaks, though her voice is shaking. He also suddenly realises that in the last month she appears to have picked up some of his speaking habits - the thought brings a small smile to his face.

"What is it?"

"' _Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger eux-mêmes_.'" she recites it by heart. "' _We protect those who cannot protect themselves_.' The Argents are French," she explains; his confusion is probably evident on his face, "and only hunt werewolves. Most of them have a moral policy, not to kill werewolves who haven't killed humans."

Dean pulls his eyes from the fire to look at the younger girl, and is shocked to see that tears are running down her face. Her fiddling with the ring has increased to almost violent proportions. He's never seen her like this before and it _scares him_. He doesn't know how to comfort her. He isn't even entirely sure why she's crying. Is it talking about her hometown? Talking about the Argents? Or is she finally acting like a normal teenager would and breaking down over everything that's happened in the last month and a half?

Whilst he knows that pushing the subject can only end badly, he also wants to know what happened to the Argents, not to mention discover a little more about Lydia's mysterious past. If hunters were killed and nobody noticed, then Beacon Hills could be a serious cause for concern once he gets out.

Lydia sniffs, reaching up to rub her eyes before deciding against it.

It turns out he doesn't have to think up a way to approach the subject, because now that Lydia has started talking it's almost like she can't stop. The words come out in a rush, like she's confessing a secret that has been weighing against her chest for years. "You might've heard of Gerard Argent. He broke the code, now he lives in a hospital with severe aconite poisoning. Kate Argent broke the code, burnt down a house full of werewolves and humans. She's a Nagual, buried deep below an ancient Mexican town. Victoria Argent is probably around here somewhere killing every werewolf in sight. I'm surprised we haven't run into her yet, to be honest. She terrified me _before_ , let alone after. Chris Argent is still alive, as far as I'm aware. And Allison..."

She breaks off into a fresh wave of tears, and now Dean reaches out an arm to comfort her.

"I just hope she's in Heaven." Lydia manages to finish, before burying her head in the arm of his jacket.

Dean can't get past his shock. It's coming back to him now. He's heard stories of the Argents, some of the greatest hunter to ever live, aside from people like Samuel Colt. They're brutal, people said. They've killed more werewolves in their time than anyone can count. But now Lydia's talking like they're completely decimated. There's only one left alive, and Dean can't help but freak out slightly. His worry for Lydia increases, and for a fleeting second he's almost _glad_ she's dead. Almost wants to suggest that she just stay in Purgatory rather than return to the chaos of her hometown. But of course that's stupid. She doesn't belong here. She's human. She deserves the chance to get to Heaven.

He avoids the subject of werewolves after that, and tries not to bring up her home either. He doesn't treat her like a china doll, as much as she complains that he does, but he can't help but watch out for her. She reminds him a bit of Krissy, thrust into the life too early. It isn't right or natural for a teenage girl to be so calm about how many things she's killed, no matter that they're not human.

It worries him how she talks about hunters and monsters. Sure, she can brutally murder fifty creatures without even breaking a sweat. But she talks about the Argents with such venom that he can practically see the hate rolling off her in waves. And occasionally she'll talk about creatures with a sort of fondness in her voice, begin to reminisce about a certain moment, before glancing at him and suddenly shutting up. It makes him wonder which side she was on before she died - or if the sides aren't actually as clear as he makes them out to be. After all, he can't say every monster he ever met in his time was mindlessly evil.

He watches her change over the next month. When he met her she was sarcastic but fairly happy; a bit shaky about killing anything, but always ready to protect him or Cas or even Benny, as suspicious as she was of him back then. Her makeup, he recalls, had been pretty much perfect even though it was a week old, and her designer clothes had been more or less intact, along with her herself.

Now he looks at her and he can barely see a teenage girl. She's only been here two and a half months but the person she was and the person she is now are like two completely different people. Her boots are wrecked, muddy and bloody. Her dress is ripped to shreds and exposing, though she doesn't seem to care about that. Her hair is matted and tangled, unbrushed and covered in dirt and blood and flecks of mercury. She ties it up every day to keep it out of her face but that barely does anything. He thinks she looks a little like that Hermione Granger character.

Her face is dirty and grimy. Her eyes are hard and unforgiving, and she wears a mask of indifference at all hours, except for when she thinks she can't be seen. Any remnants of makeup are gone. There is a gruesome half-healed slash above her left eyebrow from a lamia's claws. The mercury tears are the only thing about her face that haven't changed. He's seen her at the stream when they're taking turns to wash, looking at her reflection and desperately trying to pull them off. Clawing at her face, crying out in frustration. She comes back with raw red scratches on her skin, but the mercury stays. He thinks it might be fused to her face or something.

The only thing that hasn't been damaged, miraculously, is the oversized red hoodie she refuses to get rid of. She wears it all the time, barely takes it off, and he sometimes catches her burying her nose in it and smiling. Originally he tried to convince her that it would draw attention to them - and besides, it didn't go with her outfit anyway. He wondered where she had even found it. But the first time he saw her hugging it to herself, lost deep in thought, he realised why she refused to get rid of it and immediately backed off. He figures it might have something to do with 'Stiles', the person she screams about in her sleep.

Cas once offered her dream-free sleep, apparently one of the angel powers he hadn't mentioned before, but she refused that, because sleep was the only time she got to see her friends.

It breaks his heart to see an innocent damaged beyond repair.

* * *

The first time Lydia is allowed to question a creature after a fight is three months after she joins their group. Up until then Dean has been doing everything in his power to make sure someone else is available to do it - but after a particularly nasty incident with three skinwalkers less than five minutes after an encounter with a wendigo, Lydia is the only one left standing.

Dean watches as she pulls her knife from the last body, not too sure on how to feel when he realises he has become accustomed to the sight. He is lying on the ground with a slashed up leg which Cas is trying to heal - it takes longer because they're in Purgatory. Benny is off to the side leaning against a tree, recuperating as the eye which the wendigo tore out regrows.

There is only one skinwalker left alive. It's pinned to a tree by the knife in its shoulder, and if the half-hysterical protests it's hissing out are anything to go by, it knows exactly what is coming.

Lydia stalks up to the creature, her eyes blazing with determination. "You're going to tell me where I can find the way out of here," she states.

"No," the skinwalker snarls. It tries to shift form, but the silver knife embedded in its shoulder prevents the change.

Suddenly there is a knife in its other shoulder and it is screaming and writhing in pain. Lydia doesn't even look phased - which should disturb Dean, but it doesn't.

"I said," she pushes the knife in deeper, "you're going to tell me how to get out of here."

"Why should I?" the skinwalker spits at Lydia, spraying her with saliva and blood. It laughs manically as it attempts to tug itself away from the tree. "You'll only kill me after I give you any information."

"True," Lydia concedes. "It's more a question of how much pain you want to be in before I kill you. Again."

The skinwalker's eyes widen almost comically as Lydia whips around to face Dean with an expectant expression. "I need your knife."

Despite his reservations, he pulls it from his belt and throws it to her. She catches the handle easily and turns back to the skinwalker.

Then she sets to work.

Within ten minutes the skinwalker is reduced to a pleading, crying mess. There is blood _everywhere._ It's all over the skinwalker's body. It's all over the tree the creature is being held against, and in some places where it has dripped to the ground it coalesces in small puddles.

It is all over Lydia's hands and face and clothes, which is the most haunting sight of all. Dean has seen a lot in his thirty-three years (at least, he thinks that's how old he is) - hell, he's seen far too much. But the sight of the ruthlessness in the teenager's eyes, the sight of her dripping in the blood of a creature she tortured far too calmly, far too professionally - this is the sight that finally forces him to look away.

When it turns out that the skinwalker doesn't really know anything, Lydia executes it quickly. Dean still finds it impossible to look up at her, even when she wordlessly hands him back his knife, the blade halfheartedly cleaned against the grass.

She avoids talking to him for four full days before the watch rota puts them together. With Benny out for the count and Cas off doing God knows what, he finally corners her.

"Lydia, we gotta talk."

She avoids looking at him. "Talk about what?"

"About...dammit, Lydia, you know what I'm talking about."

She turns to face him, her blue eyes piercing and shielded. "I don't need your disapproval, and I don't want your disappointment, so whatever you've got to say, I don't want to hear it."

Dean stares at her in stunned silence for a few moments. He can barely believe his ears - nor his eyes, when he realises that the strange look he has never seen on her face before is shame. "Lydia," he says, trying to put as much weight into his words as possible. "I would _never_ be disappointed in you. Never, you got that? That's not what I mean when I say we need to talk, 'cause I can tell you that I've done _far_ worse crap in my time. I'm not going to judge you. This place-" he waves his arms at the forest, "-changes everyone. It's got different rules to Life. None of us are going to judge you."

Lydia's mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. It's the first time he's ever seen her speechless. "What do you mean, then?" she asks eventually.

"I...I just - Lydia, how are you still sane? What the hell _happened_ to you before you died?"

For a moment it looks like Lydia is about to give him a straight answer, and he holds his breath in apprehension.

Then she says, "Too much." and goes back to staring into the fire. Dean stares at the back of her head for a few seconds before pushing all of his questions to the back of his mind. His curiosity keeps getting the better of him, and he has to remind himself that, until her secrets become life threatening - if that ever happens - her life is none of his business. It's not like he's told her everything about his own life, is it?

They watch the fire in a slightly less awkward silence until Cas comes and relieves Lydia of her post.

* * *

It's early in the morning, and Dean leads the party as usual, even though his instincts are the dullest of the four of them. They've improved drastically since he's had to rely on them to survive, but Benny has supernatural hearing, Cas is an angel, and Lydia seems to have bat ears considering the sounds she can pick up.

Benny is in the middle, lost in thought as per usual. Dean often wonders what the vampire plans to do after he gets out, but decides he doesn't want to know. Lydia walks on her own in between Benny and Cas - who takes up the rear - cleaning her knife on the ragged edges of her skirt. He glances back every couple of minutes to look between Lydia and Cas because he can sense something between them has changed recently. Lydia has been cutting off his sentences, glaring at him whenever he shoots her a meaningful glance. He wants to ask, but at the same time he's afraid to open that can of worms.

It's been unusually quiet all morning, with only a vampire and a kitsune to deal with (he notices Lydia's stunned reaction to the kitsune, and files it away to ask her about later). The silence has him on edge, as he figures that the only reason that nothing is in this part of the forest is because something has scared away or killed everything nearby.

He's not surprised when he turns out to be right. They are all debating whether to stop and wash - something they haven't done in about three weeks - when a roar rattles the trees. It isn't a sound Dean has ever heard before. It sounds half wolf, half snake, a growl and a hiss combined into one hideous noise. He halts the others with a simple hand gesture, freezing to decipher which way it is coming.

It comes again, louder and closer, and there is no way he can miss Lydia whispering, "Oh my god," under her breath. Her turns on her immediately.

"What is it?" he demands, searching her face. She looks torn between fear and grief and shock, but she quickly schools her expression when she sees him looking.

"I've heard that call before," she explains. "Let me take the lead."

He gestures to her, and she immediately takes off at a run in the direction the sound is coming from. Dean follows, knowing Benny and Cas won't be far behind. Lydia leads them like she knows exactly where she is going, until they come to a sort of clearing.

The clearing is tiny, barely any different to the rest of the bleached out world he currently calls home, except for one thing.

In the middle of the clearing is a girl. She is a few years younger than Lydia by the looks of her, with long dark hair that is remarkably glossy considering their location. She wears normal clothes - jeans and a grey jumper. She could be mistaken for a human, aside from her glowing gold irises, the scales crawling up her face and the huge tail - which appears to have been cut in half - coming from behind her.

Dean is ready to run at the girl and kill her, but something makes him hesitate. Maybe it's the way she's even younger than Lydia, or the way said girl has a tentatively hopeful expression on her face. No - the real clincher is when he sees the silver tears on the girl's face.

Lydia steps forwards. "Tracy?" Her voice is quiet, but there's an emotion in there that Dean has never heard her use before. He tries to analyse her but she is hiding her face from him. Is this girl - Tracy - one of those chimeras Lydia talked about?

The girl was staring up at the washed out light above her, but now her eyes snap to look at Lydia. "We're all going to die." she says, and the terror in her voice is so pure it almost hurts. Monsters aren't supposed to sound like that.

"We're not going to die, Tracy." Lydia takes another step forwards. "It's just a night terror. The Dread Doctors aren't here. They're back in Beacon Hills. They can't hurt you ever again, I promise."

"They're coming. We're all going to die." Tracy's voice shakes. She seems frozen to the spot. Behind her animal features Dean can suddenly see the innocent girl, forced to live in this hell for the rest of eternity just because the transformation was forced upon her. Guilt washes through him as he imagines all the monsters he has ever killed roaming these woods. Most of them deserved it.

Some didn't.

"Tracy!" Lydia snaps suddenly. "You're asleep. You need to wake up. Please, I need your help. I need you to tell me whatever you know about the Dread Doctors. It's a matter of life and death. Everyone's in danger."

"N-no! Please d-don't hurt me!" Suddenly the girl is reeling backwards, covering her face with her arms. Dean tenses, unsure of what to do.

When Tracy's arms come down she is growling, and her mouth is full of fangs.

There is a moment in which all of them are frozen, broken by Tracy suddenly lunging for Lydia. The two girls are both knocked over by the impact and they go sprawling, a haze of flashing claws and knife as they fight for control. Benny runs forwards, whether to separate the two or kill Tracy, Dean will never know. It doesn't matter either way; any attempt to touch the two could risk Lydia getting hurt, and that is the one thing he won't let happen under any circumstance. He reaches out to stop Benny before he can get any closer, and gives him a look which, thankfully, the vampire seems to understand. He backs off immediately.

The three of them can only watch as Tracy and Lydia wrestle. It seems to take hours, maybe even decades, but eventually both girls fall still, and Dean's heart stops. He rushes towards them, but before he can reach them Lydia is pushing Tracy off her. The girl's body rolls onto her front, a gaping hole in her chest.

Lydia lies on the ground panting. Her arms and face are covered in scratch marks, but she seems totally unconcerned by them. When she eventually sits up Dean offers her a hand, but she knocks it away roughly and stands up shakily by herself. Dean wants to ask if she's okay, and he can feel that Cas and Benny are equally worried, but she turns away from them and staggers slowly over to Tracy's unmoving form.

Dean finds himself, once again, frozen to the spot as he watches Lydia crouch down next to Tracy, her body wracked with sobs as she murmurs what sounds like a funeral blessing. Aside from her breakdown over the Argent family, he has never seen Lydia lose control - and even that time had been in the middle of the night, just between the two of them. This is out in the open daylight, in front of all of them, and for once Lydia doesn't seem to care.

In between the sobbing and the repeated whisper of "I'm sorry" something else makes it's way to her lips. It's unnatural and shattering and screeching, and Dean's heart stops.

Lydia loses control completely.

She throws her head back and _screams_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...when I was writing this story I had it all set out. They would spend loads of chapters discovering things about each other, but it would take AGES for Dean to find out the truth. But this just sort of jumped at me, and I had to put it in. It seemed like the perfect point. I dunno - thoughts?  
> Also, I'm not too sure about how far she went. I feel like Lydia took Tracy under her wing, and it impacted her more than she said when she died.  
> **I am aware that Tracy is "not a supernatural creature" in conventional means, but, personally, I think that she would end up in Purgatory. That's just what I think, and I needed her as a catalyst between Lydia and Dean, so she's here.**  
> Please review to let me know what you think :D


	3. Lydia II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have serious issues with this chapter (the last section)...but anyway, here ya go! AND THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL YOUR COMMENTS AND KUDOS - THEY MEAN SO MUCH TO ME!!!

 

 

_The acrid air is heavy with hate_  
_And a question hangs in the haze-_  
_When will you rage?_

_One Week Earlier_

Lydia is tending the fire when Castiel appears beside her. He does so silently, and even though she's used to being sneaked up on she still nearly jumps out of her skin when she notices him.

"God, Cas!" she yells, then glances quickly at Benny and Dean on the other side of the fire. Neither of them wake up. "Don't do that!" she whispers.

"I'm sorry," he says sincerely. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"Well you did." She shakes her head to clear the exhaustion from it. Despite being tired she knows she won't be able to sleep even if she tries. Apparently insomnia is a side effect of dying. "Sorry, Cas. What did you want?"

"I want to talk to you. I have for a while, but I believed you would not want to have this conversation in front of Dean."

Lydia stills, her eyes widening as they snap to look at the angel. "What do you mean?"

"I am referring to the fact that you have been lying to both him and Benny since you first met us."

"No - no I haven't." She curses herself for the tremor in her voice, despite the fact that she knows it is impossible to lie to the angel.

"I, of course, always knew the truth. Benny suspects because he can smell that you are different. Dean has no idea. I have yet to tell him as I understand your reasons for not wanting to inform him." He turns to Lydia, and she swears she can see more emotion on his face than she's ever seen before in the last few months. "As much as I am a friend of the Winchesters, I do not condone some of their methods, and I do not wish any harm upon you."

"So you know what I am." Lydia is trying to understand the creature before her, but he keeps doing the unexpected. "You've known what I am the _whole time_."

"Of course. You are a banshee. A wailing woman. Although I must admit I have never seen a banshee as...human as you are. Most of your kind have lost themselves to the voices they hear, or they refuse to scream and the energy drives them insane."

She blanches, slipping off the log she is seated on and nearly falling face first into the fire. Cas catches her at the last second and pulls her back up to safety. "Thanks," she mutters. She shakes her head and blinks a couple of times. "Is this your way of trying to tell me something, Castiel?"

"You have not screamed since you met us ninety-seven days ago. I doubt you have screamed since you died. Considering that as a group we have killed an average of thirteen to twenty creatures every day, that is an average of at least a thousand deaths you should have screamed for. If you do not scream soon, you will die."

"But..." For once Lydia finds herself completely lost for words. She has spent the last two months focusing on anything but her scream. She has turned herself into a damn near emotionless machine, with only two goals: survive, and find a way out. She has managed to ignore it this long, especially since no one has talked about it. But now she feels like there's a hand reaching up from inside her stomach which is pulling and tearing at her vocal chords, and another pair wrapping their fingers around her lungs and squeezing as hard as they can manage. She doubles over in a coughing fit, choking on the scream that is trying to climb out of her throat.

She feels Castiel's hand on the back of her head, and all of a sudden her throat clears. The proverbial hands vanish. She sits for a second to catch her breath, heaving in breaths like the air is going out of fashion. "I don't want Dean to know," she admits. "I don't want him to know I lied to him."

"It is inevitable that Dean will find out what you are. The only variable you can alter is how he discovers the truth. I am sorry, Lydia." There is a fluttering sound, like wings, and when Lydia looks up Castiel is gone.

She has spent three months running from her scream - so long that it seems strange for her to even consider letting it out. She knows there is no way she can get far enough away that Dean won't hear it. She also realises that any death she comes across may be the one to make her break, though she likes to think that, since her self-control has got her this far, she can contain it until after she has worked up the courage to tell him about herself. About how she isn't human. About how she's been lying to him for three months even though he seems to trust her.

She stares into the fire.

* * *

_Now_

All she can hear is the scream, and the echoing voices that accompany it. Her vision is so blurred she can't even discern colour, let alone shape or dimension. The scream makes everything shake, though she has no idea how she knows this considering that every one of her senses is being blocked by a wall of sound.

Over that are the voices, whispering louder and harsher than before, more than she's ever heard at once. What they tell her makes her blood run cold, but no matter how much she tries to block them out, she is still screaming, so they are still whispering. She tries to close her mouth, tries to stop the noise, to cut off the air fueling it - anything - but the scream has taken on a life of its own.

Her fears come rushing back to her. _Once she starts screaming she may never stop_. This is how it feels to lose control - something she has never, ever, done before. She has always been too afraid of becoming like the banshees of myth and legend; lost and wandering and _screaming_. Now she is exactly like them. She is frozen, unable to move. The scream has taken her over completely - it is all that is left of her. She has wandered too far this time and there is _no way back_. No pack to support her. No Stiles by her side. Just the scream.

Endless.

Screaming.

Death.

Pain.

Just.

Make.

It.

STOP.

She has no idea how long she has been screaming. It could be days. It could be years. All she knows is that, one second she is listening to the endless, sinister babble of dead voices, and next second she hears a voice she could pick out anywhere.

_Lydia._

It cuts through everything. Through the scream, through the voices, through the energy slowly driving her insane.

_Lydia. Lydia, I need you._

She wants to call out to him. She wants to reach out and hold him and curl up in his arms, the warmest and safest place she has ever found in her entire life.

_I miss you Lydia. I wish you were here. I need you. Where are you?_

_Here!_ She wants to cry out, but her vocal chords are stuck to a single output and show no signs of stopping. She can barely think over the earsplitting noise running through her like electricity through a conductor. She has no way to slow it or stop it or change it.

_You're my anchor, Lydia, and now you're gone. I need you._

She feels his presence beside her. His hands cup her face, fingers brushing over salt water and mercury tears alike. His face appears before her, and though she knows it's just an illusion she feels her heart ache. He has his signature smirk, though his eyes are filled with sadness and loss - and something she has been trying to ignore since third grade.

"That's my hoodie," he jokes. The scream falters as a laugh tries to escape her. That _would_ be the first thing Stiles said. "I hope you plan on bringing it back to me in one piece. As well as a certain strawberry blond girl I happen to love. Don't let anything happen to either of those, or when you get back - 'cause you _are_ getting back, Lyds - I will kill you all over again, I swear. Hurry up, Lydia. I'm going out of my freaking mind without you."

The scream falters again as she attempts to nod in agreement, as she attempts to promise him, her Stiles, that she will be home as soon as she can be.

"You can stop screaming now, Lydia," he whispers. "You can do it. Just. Stop."

His presence disappears with the ghost of his lips brushing her cheek, and her mouth closes as the scream subsides. Her vision clears to reveal Cas, Benny and Dean all around her in various states of shock. Benny is covering his ears, and looks half-terrified - a fact that would amuse her if she wasn't in the process of melting down. Cas is worried, gripping her body and calling for her to stay with him.

Dean hangs back, hands covering his ears; unsure and frozen, a look of utter horror on his face.

The next thing Lydia knows she is falling forwards, her body giving way and crumpling to the ground as the world goes black.

* * *

Lydia wakes, and for a moment she has no idea where she is. Everything is blurred, but she can see the washed out white sky, the outlines of the foliage. Her breath comes in gasps, raw and ragged as if she has been screaming for days.

Everything comes back in a flood of pain, sharp and hot in her brain, and she shoots up.

"Careful," a gruff voice says next to her. Castiel is beside her, his hand still on her forehead. She pushes him away, nodding to him thankfully. Her head throbs like a marching band is using her mind as a practice ground. She shakes her head to try and clear her thoughts, but the pulsing only increases violently.

"Wha..." her voice shakes and her lips seem to have lost the ability to form words. As soon as the air rushes from her lungs to make a noise she feels it tear past her throat like a sandstorm. Her attempt at speech quickly dissolves into a coughing fit, which in turn worsens the pounding in her head.

"You were unconscious for a total of thirty-four minutes," Castiel explains. Lydia tries to comprehend his words, but it's as if he's speaking in Enochian. She feels the warmth of his hand on her head again, a heat which spreads throughout her whole body from that epicentre, and the world snaps into a sudden clarity.

"Woah."

"You okay there, sister?" Lydia's head snaps to look at Benny, who is sitting on the other side of her. Relief floods through her when she sees the worry on his face, and she throws her arms around both him and Castiel. She would never admit it - to the vampire especially - but she has come to care deeply for them in the months she's known them; maybe not I-would-die-for-you care, but certainly I-would-run-into-a-field-of-monsters-for-you care.

She doesn't know what she'd do if they rejected her.

"Um, yeah," Lydia manages, her voice shaking slightly though her throat is healed. "Yeah, thanks. I'm good."

Benny's face stretches into a smirk. "I knew you weren't human," he says, a triumphant and almost impressed tone in his voice. "I gotta say, though, you are one powerful banshee."

She finds herself smiling at the compliment, an honest to god _real_ smile for the first time in what seems like months - it probably _has_ been that long, she realises.

Benny stands, offering her a hand which she takes gratefully. Her eyes flit over the small clearing instinctively, feeling that something is missing, though she can't quite remember what.

She sees Tracy lying on the ground, and painful memories surface. The nearly healed wound on her side stings, an ever-present reminder of what the girl did to her, though she never blamed her. Tracy is wearing the same clothes as that night, though her t-shirt is now stained red. Her kanima tail is ragged where Kira's blade sliced straight through, even after this many months. The dagger Lydia put there herself - _self defense, Lydia, self defense_ \- glints in the cold daylight. Her hand shakes as she pulls it out and begins to clean it methodically on the grass, trying and failing to stop her eyes from being drawn by Tracy's face - namely the glinting frozen tears which reflect her own like a mirror.

She feels them beside her before either of them talk, their warmth a contrast against the cold hopelessness she imagines herself drowning in right now.

"Who was she?" Castiel asks softly.

"A...chimera." Lydia's mind flashes back as she speaks. She always felt like Tracy was her responsibilty; she certainly failed in that duty. "She was one of the first experiments. She gave me this," she waves vaguely to her torso, "but it wasn't her fault."

"You never talk about your past," Benny observes, and she shoots him a look.

"Neither do you."

"Touché."

Lydia shrugs, glancing once more at the body. "The sad thing is, I doubt she even knew where she was. Before they killed her, she was stuck in a night terror; her own imagination turned on her. The way she was acting, I think she was still dreaming." She shivers, says a silent farewell to a teenage girl who never deserved any of this, and picks herself up off the ground. She can't let the emotions take hold of her again, though she does feel a lot less volatile - and far more free and relaxed - now that she has rid herself of a five month-old scream.

"We should go," Castiel says. "Your scream has no doubt scared off any creatures remaining in this part of the forest, but they will be back soon to investigate the source of such power.

"Wait - where's Dean?" Lydia's mind and heart finally catch up to each other, and she realises what's missing. Dread settles like a rock in the pit of her stomach; before her eyes the image of his horror-stricken face just before she passed out appears.

Benny points silently towards the river. Before either of them can tell her to stop she is running as fast as she can, hurtling through the treeline and out onto the river bank, stones and mud spitting up in her wake. She stumbles to a halt when she finally catches sight of him. He is crouching by the water, staring into it as if it holds all the answers. From the back of him she can see his shoulders are slumped, defeated, and her heart sinks further. He doesn't even look around at the noises her entrance makes.

Her heart hammers in her chest as she walks up to him tentatively. She reaches out a shaky hand. "Dean?"

His hand grasps her wrist and he spins around as he stands up, holding her in front of him. His eyes search her face, but they are empty. They are betrayed.

For the first time since she met him, Lydia feels fear shiver down her spine. This is not her Dean. This is Dean Winchester; monster hunter, killer, suspected psychopath. This is a man who shoots first and doesn't ask questions later, a man who would not hesitate to kill her.

"Dean, stop," Lydia says calmly, shocked by the strength in her own voice. He looks vaguely surprised, as if he hadn't realised he was holding her, and immediately lets go. Then he simply goes back to staring at her.

"I'm sorry, Dean." Once the words start, they don't stop. "I'm so sorry. I can explain everything. I never meant to lie to you, I promise. I always meant to tell you what I was - I'm a banshee, which you've probably already guessed, what with all the screaming. But I swear, Dean, I've never hurt another human, and-"

"Why?" Dean's voice is a soft rasp, barely audible, but it breaks through Lydia's babbling as if he were shouting. She finds the words evaporating from her tongue. "Why, Lydia?"

"I-"

"I've known you for five months, Lydia, and all that time you've been lying to me. What else have you lied about? I can't believe a single thing you've ever said to me. I put my faith in you, I let you have my back in fights, I would've died for you, and all this time..."

"I-"

"I trusted you!"

The shout rings, echoing off the trees. The only thing following it is a heavy, tangible silence which hurts to hear.

There are two people standing by the river. One is broken, betrayed, and at a loss on how to move forward. He feels he has lost the girl he has come to love as a daughter. The other is broken in an entirely different way, rejected and slowly shattering. She realises in this instant that she has lost her father (the biological one never really counted) and that it is entirely her fault.

"Dean..."

"I just...I just need to know why you lied."

Lydia's eyes feel like they are boiling as they blur, and suddenly she is crying and sobbing, her words coming out in bursts and gasps. "You...when we first met you called me human. You called me human, Dean, and you have no idea how that felt. I mean, ever since I found out what I am, ever since I discovered the truth about what hides in the dark and under the bed, I've been looked at as a freak, a weird girl who's only useful for her brain and her powers.

"And I was scared, Dean. First I lived in fear of werewolves, then druids, then my best friend, then assassins, and finally the Dread Doctors - and they _killed me_. Then a hunter comes along and calls me _human_ and takes me under his wing and for the first time in a very long time I feel safe. I knew if you found out what I really was you'd never forgive me and I...I didn't think I could handle that. I can't handle that. I'm as human as the next person in everything that counts and I've never done anything to anyone and I wish you could see that-"

Her strength finally gives out, and Lydia dissolves openly into tears, her legs collapsing. He catches her just before she hits the ground. Immediately she burrows her face into his t-shirt, balling her fists into the fabric and leaning into him, gripping him like he'll vanish if she lets go. Her sobs take over completely, and all she can think about is the terrified grief she feels, and the comforting perpetual warmth of Dean, his arms wrapped around her, rocking her, holding her like he'll never let go, like he'll protect her from anything.

And through her tears she can hear him whispering to her. "I'm sorry, kid, I'm sorry." Over and over again, like a mantra.

They sit there by the river, a mess of grief and tears and comfort and love, two souls bonded by their experiences together. This is how Castiel and Benny find them ten minutes later, and even then they refuse to move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said, issues...  
> For anyone who thinks Dean forgave Lydia too quickly (me, for example) - don't worry, there will be loads of unresolved conflict between the two of them for a while; but I felt like at this particular point he couldn't be angry with her (she's a sobbing teenage girl, y'know? :D)  
> Hope you enjoyed, please comment - I love to know how I can improve!


	4. Stiles I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry. Like, you have no idea how sorry I am. Its been months and I promised to update but I haven't. I was actually planning to publish this chapter like clockwork as usual, but then I suddenly decided to rewrite it and then life got in the way (GCSE Mocks *sob*).
> 
> Also thank you so much for the kudos/bookmarks/reviews. I never imagined this story would be remotely popular, and this means so much to me. THANK YOU! :D
> 
> This chapter isn't my favourite - its too description/narrative based with not much dialogue, but there's lots of dialogue in the next chapter if any of you are annoyed like me so don't worry.
> 
> WARNING: For the next few or so chapters I'm going to be messing around with time, jumping back and fourth between events. It might get a bit confusing, but its the order I felt was best to write in.

 

_Do not stand at my grave and weep_  
_I am not there, I do not sleep_  
_I am a thousand winds that blow_  
_I am the diamond glints on snow_  
_Do not stand at my grave, and cry_  
_I am not there, I did not die_

Six months.

It's been six months since Lydia died. Nothing has changed in that time, and yet at the same time everything is different.

The Dread Doctors are still in Beacon Hills. That's one of the few things that shocks Stiles. The pack has never had any one supernatural enemy in town for longer than a few months - sometimes just a couple of weeks - but they've been here _six months_. It's like they're toying with their food, since Stiles is pretty sure they could destroy the pack in seconds if they felt like it.

Theo has given up the ghost about being on their side. After what happened to Lydia it was impossible for him to stay. Stiles had been right the whole time about the guy, and he only became more sadistic after he left. He remembers Scott coming to him in the days following, apologising profusely about not believing him - though if he's honest, he began to believe it himself.

Aside from the obvious gaping hole that's been filling him ever since, everything is the same. The Dread Doctors mess with the pack in some twisted way, the pack try to retaliate but end up running away. Over and over. It's like some sort of sick never-ending cycle.

Scott spends his days pretending to be a teenager, but Stiles can tell that the lines between werewolf and human are blurring for him; especially since Kira's meltdown. All of them are pretending that everything is perfectly okay, and Stiles just wants to scream at them because _nothing is okay_. It hasn't been okay since Lydia died.

He remembers how she used to hang out with him at his house after things went particularly sideways. Being the only two who didn't have an 'alter-form', they found solace in each others' company in a way Stiles compared to the pack's close bonds. They used to do this with Allison as well, and before Lydia discovered her origins he jokingly nicknamed it the 'Human Club'.

But Allison died, and now Lydia's gone too, and his Human Club meetings are a party of one. He curls up on his bed, his face buried in the pillow which seems to still smells faintly of her even after all this time; the whispered words he always wanted to tell her but never found the courage to die on his lips.

It's a sad existence, but Stiles has found his routine within it. Get up. Go to school. Go to a pack meeting. Avoid being killed by the latest chimera. Go home. It's the only way he can keep himself going.

* * *

Sometimes Stiles thinks Lydia is still there with him. If he believed in them, he might have thought her ghost was haunting him. It was small things to begin with; a warm feeling, a sense of not being alone. It escalated over the months, though, and now he swears he can hear her voice talking to him when he's stressed or on the verge of a panic attack, feel her hand in his on particularly bad days. It scares him so much that he goes to Deaton about it.

"Lydia was a banshee," the druid explains somberly, not looking up from the herbs he is organising. "From the lore I've managed to find, it's thought that they were classified as nature spirits of a sort. So it's possible that at least some of her essence is in the air."

Stiles throat is dry as he thinks of that. Lost, forever wandering in the wind. He can barely imagine the horror it.

"Of course, there is also the fact that she's your anchor."

"My anchor." Stiles echoes, a memory tugging at the back of his mind.

"When you, Scott and Allison sacrificed yourselves for your parents, each of you had a person to anchor you to this world." Deaton reminds him, and Stiles flashes back briefly to the memory of Lydia pushing him under the icy water, shivering and freezing, drowning-

He shakes his head to snap himself out of the verges of a panic attack.

"W-what exactly does that mean?"

"My best guess?" Deaton finally glances up at him. "The two of you are still connected. If anything, that connection is stronger now that both of you have experienced death."

Stiles barely manages to suppress the vicious tidal wave of grief which floods through him.

"Do you think...do you think she's happy?" He feels stupid for asking, like that little kid who has just lost his mother all over again.

Deaton looks at him blankly. "Do you want the truth or what you want to hear?"

"The truth."

"Lydia was a creature, not a human. From what I've heard, Heaven is only for humans. Therefore, whilst part of Lydia is the scream in the wind, most of her will be in Purgatory."

Stiles feels faint. _Heaven is only for humans?_ Does that mean the entire pack will be condemned, leaving him alone? He can't bear the thought of that, and ends up excusing himself from the veterinarian so he can run home and throw up. It's not just the thought of being by himself for eternity, or the thought of the pack being punished for being who they are. He feels like he's been given a secret, hot and heavy, weighing down on his shoulders. He can never tell the pack what will become of them.

He wishes he never asked.

* * *

The last teacher leaves the school premises at around nineteen hundred hours on a usual day, so just in case the pack file in silently through the back exit of the gym at eight thirty.

The pack has grown in size in the last seven months; in fact, only two of the original pack members are left. Stiles feels his heart wrench as he sees the new pack before him, both in grief and in pride. They are still here - they are still standing.

Scott stands alone at the head of their unconventional pack. Once Kira or Allison would have filled the spot beside him, but now the hole left by both of them is made of empty air. Just behind the alpha is Malia, furious and prepared for anything as usual. He cringes internally when their eyes meet and they both look away instantly. The gap created by the loss of Lydia and the betrayal of Theo gapes between them like a canyon.

Brett, Liam, Hayden and Mason stand together as the last line of defense; Hayden and Liam's hands are linked, as are Mason and Brett's. They are the newest to the pack, and younger than Stiles and Scott were when all this crap began for them. Whilst all four of them have learned a lot, come so far, since they joined the pack, not all of it is for the better. The laughter is gone, and the light in their eyes has long since faded. The fact that all the relationships he has witness in the past three years have crashed and burned only makes him worry more about their safety.

Then there is him. He stands at the back, baseball bat in hand. He knows it's a useless weapon, but despite that the familiar feeling of the curl of his fingers around the handle sends a wash of calm over him. It reminds him of better times - and he suddenly realises how horrifying his life is that he considers being almost murdered on multiple occasions as 'better times'.

"Why are we here again?" Liam speaks up, his wolf claws embedded in his palms to keep him calm. Stiles winces as he watches rivulets of blood drip from the younger boy's clenched fists. "We've done this, like, a million times. The school doesn't give us any advantage."

"It's our territory," Scott explains, using as much of his alpha-tone as he can manage. "It's the place we know best. Plus, we know they're going to attack, so why not have it in an area we actually know?" Stiles closes his eyes briefly, remembering with no small amount of phantom pain the time he suggested they face the Dread Doctors in an open field near Satomi's pack's old hunting grounds. He had been in hospital for a week after that.

"So what's the plan?" Malia demands. Her voice is steel, cold and unwavering - a far sight from the warmer, if defensive coyote he used to know. "You do have a plan, right?"

"We wait."

Stiles blinks at his best friend's back, trying to figure out whether he's being serious or not. "' _We wait_?'" he bursts out. "Can you even hear yourself right now, Scott? I knew you were bad at plans, but _this_? This is about the most awful idea you've ever come up with. We're sitting ducks!"

Scott turns to face him, and Stiles can't help but flinch as a chill runs down his spine. He is no longer looking into the kind eyes of his best friend; he is looking into the cold crimson irises of a true alpha, an alpha who has lost so many friends and fought for too long, and yet is still standing.

 _We're only teenagers_ , he thinks, and not for the first time. These thoughts often run through his head when he looks at the changes in his friends, or the haunted looks in their eyes. _Why is this our responsibility? Shouldn't we be worrying about girlfriends and SATs and being on the lacrosse team? When the Hell did teenagers become the first line of defence?_

Teenagers shouldn't look like war veterans. Yet even the ones who aren't involved in the supernatural have the look about them. A side effect of losing so many students in such a short amount of time - there have been too many to count. Everyone has lost someone in the war, whether they know it's a war or not. Sometimes Stiles wonders if maybe they do know what's going on, and are too frightened to do anything.

The adults are more blissfully ignorant than the kids nowadays. If Stiles believed in God before the Dread Doctors arrived (he didn't), then he certainly doesn't now. No loving creature could stand by and watch countless kids being brutally murdered like this. It makes Stiles feel utterly helpless.

The town is falling apart. And there's nothing he can do to stop it.

They stand for what seems like forever to Stiles' hyperactive mind. He taps his fingers nervously against the baseball bat. His eyes dart over every inch of space in the gym, watching for the slightest shift of movement. Even without werewolf hearing he can practically hear the thrum of the packs' adrenaline-fueled hearts.

It could hours or minutes later, but suddenly everyone but him and Mason flinches. Their claws and fangs grow out, their eyes flash in a three-colour rainbow. Stiles grips the handle of his bat in anticipation, teeth grinding and his body betraying his fear as his whole frame shakes.

Twenty seconds later the door to the gym creaks open. Everything is totally silent, you could drop a pin and it would sound like an explosion as it hit the ground.

The girl who hurtles into the room is not someone Stiles recognises, and a twinge of guilt runs through his heart. With the student body rapidly decreasing in number thanks to the Dread Doctors' reign of terror, Stiles made a promise to himself to find out the name of every viable chimera candidate. That way not only could he try to shock them back to their humanity, he could make sure that they didn't die unremembered. That they didn't die as just another casualty of this never-ending war they never asked to be a part of (though neither did he).

She is pretty in an unassuming way - short blond hair and blue eyes - and her clothes, too, are nondescript. The most noticeable things about her are her huge blue crystal claws and amber eyes, and the feral snarling noise she is making in the back of her throat.

These are, at least, the most noticeable things to the average civilian (Stiles hasn't considered himself a civilian in a while). What Stiles' eyes are drawn too is the unfocused look in the girl's eyes; she never looks directly at one of them, staring off into space as if she is seeing something else entirely - or as if she isn't there at all. He notices the tremors racking her torso, the mercury bleeding in a sickly slow drip from a slash on the side of her neck.

Her snarling seems pitiful compared to the answering echo she receives from the wolves in the McCall pack. The tension crackles in the air, so thick it is almost tangible, for what seems like forever but is, in reality, only a moment. Then all of a sudden the moment is broken, and the girl throws herself towards them.

It sounds like an easy fight when Stiles thinks about it. One chimera girl who's gone completely crackers against three werewolves, two humans, a chimera and a werecoyote. It sounds like it should be over in a flash with only one obvious outcome. But there are two truths which make this statement false: first is that psycho also means strong; the girl is almost rabid in her attacks.

The second truth is that, whilst there are more of them now, whilst the pack is larger, it certainly isn't a cohesive unit. It hasn't been since Lydia died - maybe even before that. They are a group of under experienced teens who are falling apart at the seams, held together with sticky tape and paperclips.

Long story short, the girl does go down, but she takes people with her.

The fight is so quick that Stiles' eyes can barely focus on anything. One moment the girl is taking a swing at Liam, the next Scott is throwing her back into the bleachers, but Malia is doubled over on the ground, blood leaking from her mouth. Stiles dodges around the action, narrowly missing a set of extended claws - whose, he has no clue - and runs to her, skidding to a halt by her side. He sinks to the ground.

"Malia?" There is no answer. She is propped up on one of her elbows, but her whole frame is convulsing. She coughs, and a blood spatter appears on the gym floor. She doesn't answer him. "Malia! Come on, Malia, listen to my voice. Can you hear me?"

A small, shaking nod answers him.

"Good, okay, good." He gently takes hold of her, a hand on each side, and rolls her over on her back. Her face contorts, and she curls in on herself, whimpering quietly.

Behind him there is a high pitched scream, a thud as someone falls to the floor, but Stiles doesn't waste energy glancing back. It's terrifying to realise, but he knows the scream of every member of his pack by heart. This wasn't one of them. He can envision the sight from seeing similar scenes before; he shudders and shoves the thoughts away, focusing on Malia.

She is no longer convulsing, but her body is shivering. Her once blue t-shirt is now soaked through a wet purple-red colour. Stiles quickly puts his hand to the wound, applying pressure to at least slow the bleeding until he can get her to Melissa. With his other arm he pulls off his jacket, draping it over her body in an attempt to stave off the shivers which clearly have nothing to do with temperature.

It's in these small moments, in the fray of battle, watching his friends in pain and being helpless to stop it - it's in these moments he wishes he said yes to Peter. It seems like such a long time ago, standing in that parking lot and shaking in fear, back when a single murderous alpha was the only problem he had. He wishes he had agreed to take the bite. If he'd survived, he would be able to help now. If he had died, Allison would be alive, Isaac would still be here, Chris Argent would still be here.

So much suffering would have been avoided if he had taken that bite. His hands shake as he feels Malia's blood seeping through his fingers. He wants to be able to take her pain, to comfort her.

Everything falls quiet behind him. "Scott!" he yells. "Call your mom. Now."

* * *

The pack convene for a meeting shortly after the attack.

Although Derek is with Braeden doing God knows what, the pack still have keys to his loft, so this is where they have their pack meetings. They've made the place a bit more homely in the last year: added a couple of comfy chairs and sofas, a few bean bags and a table they can gather around, and a fridge full of food for when they decide to stay over and keep together to strengthen their bonds or feel safe. They've been doing that a lot more since Lydia died.

All of them have changed. When he looks in the mirror he barely recognises himself. He's been mainlining caffeine for half a year just to keep himself going, so his fingers barely stop moving, and his face is a mask of shadows from lack of sleep; any sleep he does get is scared away by nightmares. He sees the bruises and cuts from the fights he's had, and the prominent reminder of Donovan in the perfect circle of holes on his right shoulder. His body aches with every movement. To be honest, he's not exactly sure how he hasn't run himself into the ground yet.

Scott clears his throat, snapping Stiles' attention to the present. When his best friend speaks his words are heavy and somber. "Is everyone okay?" This pulls a small smile from Stiles. It seems Scott hasn't changed as much as he thought. " How's Malia doing?"

He directs this question to Stiles. It was touch and go, but eventually Stiles convinced Malia that taking a night off in hospital wouldn't kill her, and might actually do some good. He sat with her for as long as he could, wallowing in his own guilt because if only he was stronger, he could have stopped this gripping her hand - trying to remember the last time it had been just the two of them, together - before answering Scott's summons.

He inclines his head by of reply, knowing that's enough of an answer. She's alive: that's enough, for the moment.

"Everyone else?"

A few mumbles rise up as they confirm, but Stiles stays silent. He hasn't been okay since Lydia. Scott gives him a sharp look, but Stiles ducks his head before their eyes can meet.

"Right then. We need to-"

But Scott doesn't get any further with his sentence, because at that moment the intruder alarm goes off.

The whole pack freezes momentarily, unsure of what to do. There shouldn't be anyone at the door, because the only other people in town who know what's going on are Parrish, his dad and Melissa - and they're at the hospital or the station doing research, on the other side of town. Stiles looks to Scott for a signal, and sees him nod his head. Suddenly everyone is moving, and Stiles finds himself being pushed to the back of a formation of angry creatures - eyes glowing, claws and fangs bared, growling furiously.

As the human, he is the weakest.

He lunges to the stairs and pulls out the baseball bat he hid under the first step of the staircase as a precaution. It feels familiar and heavy in his grip, though it makes him feel no safer. There is no way he can do anything with it if this is the Dread Doctors or a chimera - which it probably is.

The metal door rattles slightly before screeching as it slides open. Stiles holds his breath, his heart beating at a millions miles an hour.

Out of the shadows steps a group of three. Two of them are guys, people Stiles doesn't recognise. One is much taller than the other, but they both wear similar clothes and have similar features (maybe brothers?) and similar looks - ones that say they've seen too much. It's an expression he's seen a lot recently.

The girl leading is someone he will never forget. She may look different from the last time he saw her - hardened expression, posture prepared for attack, eyes jumping around the room, not to mention the scar winding down the left side of her face - but he will never forget those blue eyes, nor that strawberry blond hair.

Neither will he forget his fear as she was forced to the ground, her final scream as the mercury dripped from her eyes. He squints at her and can _see_ those silver tears on her cheeks. He blinks. This is impossible, he knows it's impossible, and yet his eyes refuse to tell him any story other than that Lydia Martin is standing before him, and she is definitely alive.

* * *

There is a moment of silence as everyone and everything freezes. The two sides regard each other, and Stiles can _feel_ the confusion and anger rolling off the pack in waves. Stiles himself is still sure he's hallucinating. He knows the Dread Doctors can alter perception; that has to be what's going on right now. He's not actually in the loft, he's on a metal operating table, crowded by twisted masked scientists. He thinks he would prefer that being the case instead of the confusion and heart-wrenching grief that comes flooding back.

The shorter guy by Lydia's side suddenly cracks a wide, over-exaggerated smile. "Well, Lydia," he says, "I've met some werewolves in my time, and I gotta say, your pack is downright civilised compared to them."

The moment is broken. Suddenly everyone is talking at once, glancing to each other, firing questions at Scott, Lydia, anyone who might have a clue as to what the Hell is going on. Stiles finds himself unable to move or speak. His gaze is locked on Lydia, who is in turn surveying the pack with a look of mixed grief and amusement. The guys either side of her look almost bored at the arguments breaking out, though he can see the wary readiness they possess, just in case.

Lydia's eyes meet his and he immediately feels the beginnings of a panic attack gripping his chest. He tries to breathe but the air sticks in his throat. His lungs refuse to work, and his rasped attempts to get the attention of his bickering friends fall silently. He stumbles back, tumbling onto a step and trying to think straight. He hasn't had a panic attack in a long time, and the feeling of it grips him with terror.

He manages to raise his eyes, to see Lydia is no longer standing idly by her friends. She is barging towards him, pushing past the pack - who fall silent as they watch her in shock. She sinks to her knees in front of Stiles and kisses him.

Shock floods his brain. He can hardly comprehend what is happening. He remembers the feel of these lips, and in that instant he knows that this is no illusion. Nothing and no one could ever recreate her to this level of detail. He can feel the softness of her skin against his, see her eyes staring at him as they connect, shimmering and broken and _alive_.

He can also feel the freezing cold metal which is fused to her face. He can feel the heat radiating from her fresh wounds. She smells of blood and sweat and nothing like his Lydia, but he sure as Hell knows now that it is her.

Lydia is alive.

He stops breathing, and for a moment they are held in time. It is just him and the strawberry blond girl he has loved his entire life, suspend in time. Then she breaks away and sits back on her legs, and he is left gasping for air and staring at her.

She gives him a small smile as he takes her in again, now that his mind has accepted her existence. "Hey, Stiles," she says, her tone almost shy.

"Lydia..." he breathes.

Stiles faints.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> REALLY IMPORTANT: I'm from England, so I have no idea how the American school system works, but I'm trying to write a teen fiction story set in New York so I really need to know. Can someone (or many someones) message me with a basic breakdown? Like what age you are in certain grades, how many semesters there are, the rough dates of school holidays, what the high school years are named (freshman, etc.), what sort of subjects are on offer, how the whole 'getting held back' thing works, etc. Basically I just need someone to explain American schools to me. Anyone who does so gets a shout out in the next chapter and my eternal gratitude! :D
> 
> In other news, oh my gods the 5b trailer! Can't wait for January *jumping up and down in excitement*
> 
> I can't promise regular updates because my life is so erratic right now and I don't want to lie to you guys, but I will do my best to update. I have half of the next chapter written, and plans for the next five after that so fingers crossed.
> 
> Thanks for reading, hope you liked it - please tell me what you thought!


	5. Dean II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY! It's been like five months omg. I have a long list of excuses - number one being that I accidentally deleted everything I had for this fic and have had to completely rewrite EVERYTHING. Also my GCSEs start in ELEVEN DAYS and I've barely revised. Ack. I'm gonna die.  
> Anyway, yeah. Before you read any further, you might want to go back and read chapter four, because I've reuploaded it with some changes. Predominantly that I put Malia in hospital instead of having her attend the pack meeting, because although Stydia is my OTP and obviously endgame in this fic, I do also ship Stalia (I don't understand why people think you can only ship one of them?) so I didn't want Malia to be present when Lydia kisses Stiles, cos that would've caused all sorts of drama.  
> Also, thank you to **pro_in_procrastinate** for answering my question about american schooling! Have some virtual cookies :D

  
_Heaven if you sent us down,_  
_So we could build a playground,_  
_For the sinners to play as saints,_  
_You'd be so proud of what we've made_  


_Seven months ago_

Once he knows Lydia's secret, many things change - and he can't believe he didn't guess _something_ before.

In the few months he's known Lydia, he thought he _knew_ her. To him, she was a young teenage girl thrust into a brutal world without choice. She was damaged.

She was like him.

And in some respects, that's all true. But now he knows her secret, he sees the other sides of her. Yes, she was never given a choice. And yes, she is definitely damaged. And dead. But he doesn't believe for a second that she regrets her time in the supernatural world. If she had the choice to go back to a normal life, she wouldn't take it. He knows that now.

Also, once her secret comes out, other things follow. Her mysterious past, previously discussed only in the dead of night by firelight, becomes something of common conversation topic. Dean wakes one morning to here Lydia jovially detailing the time her pack went to Mexico to barter with a group of hunters.

And that's another thing. Lydia's _pack_. Dean knew about the werewolves, sure - but _pack_? One that involves a banshee? (And a human and a kitsune, if he's heard correctly.) He was never expecting that. But at the same time, it makes so much sense. Her surprise at the feral werewolves they encountered in their time in Purgatory, her wariness of hunters and sympathy for creatures. Once Lydia's secret is out in the open, things snap into clarity.

He finds himself looking at her differently, too. Despite his promises to himself - to her - to accept her, to see why she lied to him, he just can't help it. Because Lydia isn't human. Lydia is a banshee. She screams the names of those who have died, can find things out by listening to the voices in her head. Because that doesn't sound completely insane.

There are moments when he looks at her, and he can't see that innocent teenager he thought he knew.

But then there are also moments when he looks at her, and he understands. He sees her suffering, her pain, and he sees that she is far from innocent. But she is still a teenager, human or not. He sees it in her carefree laughter, the childish glee sparkling in her eyes when she races Benny from tree to tree, the mocking tone she teases them all with.

So yeah, it takes him a while. He gets reproachful looks from both Cas and Benny in that time, judging him in his unwillingness to wrap his head around the truth. Eventually, when it's their turn to watch whilst the others sleep, Cas corners him.

"Dean," he begins, and Dean can already tell by his tone of voice what the angel is about to say.

"I don't wanna hear it, Cas," he growls, poking the fire unceremoniously with a stick.

"I don't understand why you refuse to see Lydia for what she is." he continues anyway, and Dean sighs in defeat. If they're going to have this conversation, it may as well be whilst the other two are asleep.

"It's not that I don't accept it, Cas. It's just...she lied to me, this whole time."

"I lied to you before. You forgave me. I knew the entire time what Lydia was, and I never told you."

"That's not - that's not the point. I don't trust easily, you know that. But I trusted her."

"All I see is a lonely, terrified girl trying to find a way to survive. Tell me you've never lied to survive?"

Dean purses his lips, staring past the fire to look at Lydia's unmoving form. In the fire light her hair looks similar to the dancing flames beside her. He thinks back to the day Tracey died. How terrified he was, even for that brief moment, that he had lost Lydia. That she would never smirk at him again with that know-it-all expression. That he would never hear her laugh, or reel off a list of facts and trivia in a way which achingly reminded him of Sam.

Somehow this teenage girl has slipped past all of his barriers and wormed her way into his heart and he _cares_. Oh god, how he cares. In that moment he realises just how much this trio he's found means to him. He never expected to ends up so close to the very things he was supposed to hunt.

A smirk pulls at his lips as he tries to envision his family's reaction to this. If his father could see him...his dad would probably wipe them all out, he thinks - Dean included. Even Sam, as sympathetic as he is, would have trouble believing his eyes.

This, these people, have become like family. He trusts them with his life. Cas, of course, has been family for a while now. But now he has Benny, his brother in arms, and Lydia, who he could easily think of his daughter despite being only a dozen or so years older than her.

Cas gives him a knowing smile, and turns away to look into the fire.

The four of them soon settle back into a routine. They hunt, they kill, they search for a way out of this nightmare - same as before. But every so often, Lydia will begin to cough, to choke, until it doesn't seem like she'll ever stop. Dean remembers her doing this back before he knew, and realises now that this is her way of desperately trying to stifle the scream crawling up her throat.

When this happens, now, they all back away.

Dean finds himself unable to look as Lydia screams, instead choosing to look away, block his ears and wait until the forest stops shaking. Then he rushes over, helps Lydia up off her feet and pulls her into a hug. Screaming takes a lot out of her, and he knows from what little he's told them that she hears things as she does so. From her expression, the vacant and shaken look she gains afterwards, it's never anything good.

The upside, however, is that this usually scares off any monsters within a hundred mile radius, so they have at least a couple of hours before anything life-threatening happens.

This is the time when they sit together and share their stories. Cas tells them all of the beauty of the ancient civilisations he had the privilege of overseeing. Benny tells them of what life was like back when he was human. Lydia details the extraordinary enemies her pack and town have face in the past year.

And Dean - Dean slowly, slowly, begins to tell them of his history. Of the Yellow Eyed Demon, of Sammy's abilities - of his time in hell. And slowly but surely, the wounds that seem to have scarred him permanently since then begin to heal, until he begins to feel that maybe, just maybe, surrounded by all these monsters who he trusts more than anyone else right now, he can be human again.

* * *

_One month ago_

The closer they get to the portal back to the land of the living, the more powerful and life-threatening the monsters get. So when they are suddenly surrounding by the oozing black forms of slowly shifting leviathans, Dean knows this is the so called last line of defence.

Of course, this isn't his first thought upon seeing the creatures again. Or even the second. His mind briefly flashes back to the explosion which blew him into this hellhole, the immense pain followed by the sensations of floating and nothingness. He shivers and shakes his head to rid him of those thoughts, and settles on the thought of killing these sons of bitches once and for all.

"Dean!" Cas yells, catching his attention. He looks over to see the angel ushering for him to run. "You've got to get out of here, now!"

Dean glances up the hill. About twenty metres further up the incline is the portal. Now that he is so close its energy is practically ripping apart the air in an attempt to envelope him and take him back to Earth. He is so close to getting back to everything - to Sam.

He glances briefly down at his arms. Both his forearms are pulsing with a red light which writhes restlessly under his skin, and for a moment it crosses his mind as to how strange it is that these shifting energies are his friends - his family.

The masses of leviathan goo begin to take on vaguely human forms, and Dean doesn't need anymore incentive. He darts back in between them and grabs hold of Cas's wrist, tugging him up the incline. He can feel a slight resistance, like Cas is pulling back, but he refuses to think of it and instead renews his efforts to get all of them to safety before the leviathans can make a move.

He can hear the snarling of the leviathans behind them but now his mind is on one track. Within seconds he closes the gap between them and the portal. He has one foot in when he feels Cas become suddenly heavier in his grip. He turns to see two leviathans tugging at Cas's ankles, pulling him away from the portal.

"Come on, Cas!" Dean cries, heaving as hard as he can against the superior strength of the monsters. "I got you!"

"Dean!" Cas locks eyes with him once more, and then his hand slips from Dean's grasp and the angel falls away just as he himself stumbles into the blue light.

There is nothing but searing light, and the sensation of burning cold. It feels as if the energy is tearing at his very being, trying to pull him apart molecule by molecule. He struggles through it, every step seeming to take years of effort. It could be days or seconds before he reaches the end, but the light and pain vanish as if they were never there at all.

He finds himself in a forest, and for an instant he is terrified that the portal failed. But no; he can sense the difference. The night isn't bleached of colour. The air isn't that monotonous cold, but has a warmer autumn feel to it. It even smells different - no bloody, rotting scents; instead he can smell fresh pine and wood smoke.

Relief crashes into him like a tidal wave. He sinks to his knees and places his hands on the ground and for a moment he simply stays there, relishing in the feeling of safety and home. He is finally _home_. He can barely comprehend the thought. For such a long time it seemed less than a mere possibility, and now here he is.

Then it crashes down on him that he has no idea where here actually is, and the moment is over. He stumbles to his feet and looks around wildly, analysing which course of action is best to proceed with. He could wander around until he finds his way out, but that could take hours or even days, and he doesn't have that much time. He has to get Benny and Lydia back to their bodies. After all, it isn't an exact science - who knows how long their souls will last without their hosts?

Wood smoke. The words run through his head again and he realises what they mean. Someone must have a fire burning close by. Without thinking twice he sets off in the direction of the scent, and soon comes across a tent with the embers of a fire left outside. A man is standing outside the tent. As soon as Dean enters the clearing he spins around and gasps.

All of a sudden Dean realises how terrifying he must look. He is caked in a year's worth of mud and blood and goo. His face is scarred. Not to mention, he is holding a huge blade made of bones and twine. Still, if he can scare them into talking he can get out of here without any awkward questions.

"Where am I?" he demands, shaking the blade for added effect.

"W-what?" the man stutters. Another person emerges from the tent - a woman.

Dean lifts the blade again, putting on what he hopes is a menacing look rather than the tired grimace he feels he is making. "Where's the road?"

"Twelve miles." The guy points behind him. "That way."

Dean narrows his eyes at the couple and, not taking his eyes off them, snatches up one of their supply rucksacks which is resting by the fire and takes off in the direction the guy pointed. He can hear their confused protests but he ignores them and focuses on running. Twelve miles is nothing to him after walking an infinite forest for a year so he barely slows. Unfortunately the run gives him time to think.

Cas. Cas is gone, still trapped in that hellhole, and it is entirely Dean's fault. If he had just held on tighter, pulled a little harder, Cas would be with him, rather than falling prey to the most vicious of creatures. It will be a miracle if Cas survives much longer.

He shakes his head and pushes those thoughts to the side. There is nothing that can be done, as much as it pains him to accept that. He has two people he can still save, and he has to think of them right now.

* * *

On the way to Benny's grave he manages to clean himself up considerably. He washes of as much of the dirt and grime as he can when it rains, and ditches his clothes in favour of the ones in the backpack he stole. Also in the backpack is enough money for a shovel and a couple of bus rides, and camping rations which he plans to spread out over the course of a few days before he can get his hands on a phone.

He arrives at the place Benny told him to go late in the night, and by then his arms are aching like Hell. Especially the left one, which holds Benny's...essence? Soul? It's as if the energy can tell it is close to being released, because it pushes against his skin as if it is on the verge of tearing out.

He finds the spot where the red light in his left arm glows the brightest and begins to dig. The nostalgia of digging up a grave brings a grim smile to his lips. It's painful work, but the satisfaction when he hits bone is worth it. He quickly scrapes away the mud and soil until he can see all of the body. He briefly wonders why Benny was buried like this, but then he supposes that whatever hunter killed the vampire didn't care too much about him.

"This better be you, you son of a bitch," he mutters through gritted teeth, rolling up his sleeve and pulling out his knife. He draws the blade across his skin just above the pulsing light. Holding his arm above the grave so that the soul can escape, he imagines expelling the energy from his body. " _Anima corpori fuerit corpus totem resurgent._ "

His arm burns as the last of energy drips into the grave, and Dean collapses on the ground, his head and arm pulsing painfully. He feels like he's just been run over by a truck, which is why he barely hears the familiar chuckle from behind him.

"You look like Hell, brother," Benny comments as he pulls Dean onto his feet. Dean examines his friend, checking him over - before pulling the man into a hug. He honestly didn't believe that it would work originally.

"That was quick," he observes as they part.

"No thanks to you," Benny quips. "The Hell took you so long?"

"You're welcome."

Benny gives a half-smile. "I suppose this is good-bye, then?"

"I suppose," Dean nods. Somehow he feels this won't be the last he sees of the vampire despite their words.

"Say goodbye to the kid for me, will you?"

"Sure, Benny." Dean reaches out a hand, which Benny grasps tightly.

"Goodbye, brother."

Dean nods his head in answer, suddenly and unexpectedly hit by a wave of emotion and unable to speak.

Their hands fall to their sides, and Dean goes to pack his things back into the stolen bag. When he turns back, Benny is gone.

* * *

Lydia's grave is all the way in Beacon Hills, California, so it takes him another few days to make it to the town. Once there he asks a passerby for directions to the cemetery, which turns out to be huge, and he has to spend another couple of hours walking around trying to find the fairly new stone which marks the young banshee.

He finds it eventually, and isn't quite ready for the rush of emotions that run through him when he sees her headstone.

_**Lydia Lorraine Martin** _

_**Loving daughter and friend** _

_**1995-2012** _

_**Always in our thoughts, forever in our hearts** _

In all the months he spent with her in Purgatory, Dean realises that he began to forget that she is only seventeen. Even now that he knows most of what happened before she died, it makes him wonder just how cruel Fate is that this is the hand it dealt such a young girl.

His hands shake as he begins to dig.

Once that's done, he levers open Lydia's coffin - a thick and sturdy oak box with the banshee's name inscribed in a metal plaque on the front. He doesn't dare to look down at her body. She's only been in the ground for six months, so she has yet to make the ghastly transition from body to bones. Dean repeats the ritual he said over Benny's burial site, gripping the knife over the arm that contains Lydia's writhing essence, which strains under his skin now that it is so close to its host form.

"Good luck, kiddo," he mutters through gritted teeth, and with a small grunt of pain he slices a deep red line into his forearm - for the second time in so few days. His reaction isn't as violet as the first time - should he be disturbed that he's getting used to the sensation? Probably - but his ears ring and his vision blurs.

He blinks a couple of times, shaking his head to right his thoughts. When his vision clears he can't resist the urge to look down, for fear that something has gone wrong.

His eyes are greeted with the sight of a strawberry-blond girl looking at him expectantly, hands on hips. "Well?" she demands. "It's not like I can just jump out of this hole myself, is it?"

A laugh bubbles through Dean's lips. He hasn't laughed like that in...Hell, he can't remember the last time he laughed like that. He immediately offers Lydia a hand, which she takes wordlessly. When she's almost completely out he loses balance and topples backwards, pulling her with him. They end up in a tangle of limbs, laughing and swearing simultaneously.

Lydia stands, her legs shaking slightly, and gives him a hand up in return. Dean blinks, taking her in. She doesn't look much different from Purgatory. The clothes aren't the same - a short denim skirt, white and purple floral top, black heeled boots; Dean assumes that this was probably one of her favourite outfits before she died. But the hair is the same - if a little shorter - and the wounds she got before she died have healed as they did in the last six months. The scratch she got from a particularly vicious vetala on the side of her forehead has scarred just as it did in Purgatory, though in the unbleached light of the real world it looks vivid and red.

The mercury tears are still there, too, but Dean doesn't have the heart to mention this to her yet.

"Stop staring," Lydia snaps, her cheeks tinted pink. "I'm covered in dirt, I need a shower, and you standing there gaping is doing what, exactly, to fix the situation?"

Dean shrugs. "How d'you feel?"

She shivers slightly as a particularly violent gust of wind blew through the cemetery. "Cold, for one thing. A bit dizzy. I'm sure it'll pass." Dean pulls his jacket off and drapes it over her shoulders before she can start complaining about him treating her like a baby; she withdraws into it thankfully. "How are you?"

"Good." Dean curses himself internally as the word comes out far too fast. If there's anything this girl has learned in the last six months, its how to read him. In fact, he finds that ability one of the creepiest in her repertoire.

Lydia raises a skeptical eyebrow, as expected. Her eyes flicker to either side of him. "Where are Benny and Cas?"

"Benny sends his love," Dean answered. To avoid looking her in the face he begins knocking the dirt pile beside him back into the grave. "I resurrected him first - wow, how many times am I gonna say that, huh? - and he left to do...whatever those new age veggie-vamps do nowadays."

He can tell a thousand things from the mournful look on her face, but she doesn't voice them so neither does he. She stares at the ground for a second before joining in with the re-burying of her now empty coffin.

"And Cas?"

Dean freezes. For a moment his mind is stuck on the image of Cas' hand slipping from his grip, the sight of the angel falling down the slope and back into the clutches of the leviathans below. He shakes his head and the image vanishes, but Lydia's horrified expression is what greets him instead.

"Oh god," she breathes. "What happened?"

"I...I wasn't strong enough. There were leviathans everywhere, and it happened so fast. I lost my grip and-"

"Dean." Lydia takes hold of his hand and squeezes, gripping it tight. "Whatever happened, I'm sure it wasn't your fault. You tried, okay?"

He takes a shaky breath, before nodding his head.

"I don't know about you," she says suddenly, "but I haven't eaten in six months. I'm in desperate need of a cheeseburger."

He finds himself laughing again, for the second time in as many minutes.

* * *

It takes them the rest of the night to rebury Lydia's now empty coffin. Said girl spends most of the time complaining, questioning his sanity and asking how the hell he's able to do this on a regular basis. They banter back and forth like this until the sky is turning pink and the earth below her tombstone is smoothed over and flat, and it's such a relief not having to look over his shoulder every two seconds, always moving and barely staying still, that once it's done Dean sinks to the ground and pulls out the two beers in his backpack that he bought from the convenience store on the outskirts of town.

Lydia raises an eyebrow at the bottle he offers her. "You do realise I'm a minor?"

He gives her an incredulous look. "Yeah, I'm sure you're the poster child for not breaking the law."

"Fair point." She takes the bottle and sinks down beside him. "You think they could've come up with something more creative," she motions at the inscription on her grave with her bottle.

"I think it's pretty poetic." Dean shrugs. "It could be worse. All I got was a wooden cross to mark my grave."

She snorts, muttering a comment about how screwed up they both sound. He can't help but agree.

So they sit by Lydia's grave, drinking their beers, watching the sun rise. Dean can't help but realise this is the happiest, most peaceful, he's felt in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there it is. I'm actually pretty pleased with how this chapter turned out, considering the amount of trouble it gave me whilst I was actually writing it. Once again, I am so sorry for the delay! I've already started writing Chapter 6, and there's nothing like imminent and life-deciding exams looming on the horizon to inspire your creative muse.
> 
> I love to know what you guys think, don't hesitate to leave a comment (and kudos :D)!


	6. Lydia III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter in less than two months? It must be Christmas (or GCSE procrastination. Take your pick).

  
_You're dripping like a saturated sunrise_  
 _You're spilling like an overflowing sink_  
 _You're ripped at every edge_  
_But you're a masterpiece_  


Lydia wishes she could just sit there by her grave, drinking beer and watching the sun rise. It seems so peaceful, so calm, so different from the last six months - so different from the hellish existence she's lived since the night of the spring formal in sophomore year.

But she knows it's too good to last. They have to leave before the cemetery opens, before they're caught trespassing or sitting by a suspiciously disturbed grave. Not to mention the fact that her face is pretty recognisable, and was probably published in the Beacon Hills Gazette when she died.

That's why, when they leave to go find that cheeseburger, Lydia suggests they do so out of town. Dean agrees with minimal questioning, and hot wires the first car they come across. The whole way down the highway he's complaining about how much he misses his Baby - the Impala he usually drives. Lydia's never been much of a car person, but after seeing how much Stiles cared for that piece of crap jeep, she can vaguely understand Dean's anguish.

Eventually they find a diner off the highway. There's enough money in the cup holder of the car they 'borrowed' to afford two cheeseburgers, thank god.

They sit in one of the obnoxiously coloured booths by the window, in full view of the pink and blue sunrise and the vibrant green tree line, because Lydia still isn't used to the colour and she wants to see everything she can in as little time as possible, as if the world will bleach and bleed out at any moment.

The waitress who comes to get their order can't take her eyes off Lydia's face. She blushes, assuming the mud on her face makes her look homeless and dirty. She can't remember the last time she felt truly self conscious, and it shakes her slightly.

Dean coughs, looking expectantly at the waitress, and the woman looks startled, as if she hadn't even realised she was staring.

Once she leaves with their orders Lydia looks back to the window, focusing on her reflection in the glass rather than the sight outside. Silver tears glint back at her, almost sparkling in the harsh overhanging lights of the diner.

She whips around to Dean, anger bubbling inside her. "Why didn't you tell me?" she hisses, glancing quickly around to see if anyone else can hear them. It's early enough in the morning that the diner is relatively deserted.

He shrugs, guilt evident in his features, and Lydia backs down slightly. She knows the effect the tears have on her was no secret to him - it's hard to hide scratch marks when they're on your face, and the number of times she had attempted to forcefully prise the mercury from her cheeks is not exactly low. But, still. As much as she had been hoping for them to miraculously disappear during her resurrection, she should have known that she would never be that lucky - and that Dean would try to save some of her piece of mind, if only for a few hours.

"Thank you," she whispers, and he nods in acknowledgement, surprised.

The food arrives on a red plastic tray, and Lydia can't do anything but stare at it for a few seconds, a strange sensation in her stomach. The feeling of hunger is so unfamiliar to Lydia that she does a double take when she she suddenly notices the clawing feeling inside her. It feels similar to the scream she held back, what seems like a life time ago.

Once she starts to eat, she barely stops to breathe.

Dean watches her with a vaguely impressed look on his features as she licks the last of the grease off her fingers. He can't really talk, though, considering his plate is equally empty.

Lydia sits back in her seat, feeling more comfortable than she has in a long time.

"So," Dean begins, and Lydia tenses, because that tone never bodes well. He sounds casual, but it's forced and strained. "After this, do you want me to drive you back to Beacon Hills? You have your pack to get back to, I know, and your mom, so you probably want to get back as quickly as possible-"

"No."

Dean does a double take, and even Lydia is surprised at herself. The reply came from nowhere, but she realises she means it. She can't just go back to Beacon Hills immediately - she's too different from how she used to be. She doesn't think she can face Scott's horrified expression when he inevitably smells the scent of death that undoubtedly clings to her now. She doesn't want to see her mother's pained look, or the suspicious glances she knows she'll receive from the rest of the town.

Besides, she doesn't want to leave Dean like this. He's saved her in more ways than one, and she knows she'll miss him if he leaves, after seeing him every second of the day for the past six months. He just lost his best friend, and needs to find his brother. Lydia knows she needs to help him.

"Can I stay with you?" she asks her question quietly, suddenly terrified once again of the possibility of his rejection. "I just...think I need a little time to adjust to. You know. Life."

She can see the obvious, barely concealed relief in his eyes. "Yeah." he manages. "Sounds fine to me."

Lydia allows herself a small smile in his direction. "So what's first?"

* * *

What's first is getting a motel room for the day. They drive a few more miles away from town before stopping, not wanting to risk her being recognised.

Lydia pushes forcefully past Dean the moment he has the door open, making a beeline for the bathroom. She can hear Dean's gruff laughter at her as he dumps his bag on one of the beds, and shouts a few colourful words at him through the paper-thin walls.

In Purgatory, everything was the same temperature. Fire, water, human contact - everything. Here in the real world everything is so varied, different ends of extreme to her now she's experienced a place with nothing.

She turns the shower up to the highest it will go. The hot water is like needles on her skin, hammering down onto her. The pain grounds her. This is real. She's _alive_.

She scrubs her limbs thoroughly, getting rid of every single inch of dirt coating her skin. She scrubs so hard she opens up a few of her wounds, and then she washes those out, too, watching in morbid fascination as the scarlet blood spirals down the plug hole with the white soap suds and water.

She loses track of time, the rhythmic beat of falling water and the haze of steam surrounding her lulling her into a daze. Her mind drifts. She thinks of her friends in Beacon Hills. How have they been in the six months since she saw them?

Lydia remembers the aftermath of Allison's death. None of them had ever recovered, not really. Scott could barely function for weeks out of grief, and she knows she barely scratched the surface of Stiles' guilt. She remembers herself. How the scream had lingered in her ears for months, how she could feel the empty place inside that Allison's soul had torn out of her when she died.

She tries to imagine her friends after her own death. How could she leave them to grieve for longer than absolutely necessary? When she died the town was being _decimated_ , and now she's back what has she done? Run away.

A sharp pain stings in her scalp, and it takes her a moment to realise that she's tangled her fingers into her hair and is _pulling_ , tugging as if she can punish herself for her selfishness that way. She feels her chest constricting as she tries to take a breath to calm herself. Her lungs seem frozen, her breathing shallow, restricted, and its a bit like holding back a screaming and yet _so much worse_.

_Stop breathing_ , her mind tells her, but her breaths are so shallow that she's barely taking in any air as it is. Panic rises, wild and terrifyingly uncontrollable, in her chest. She tries to think back, to visualise the words she read before her. _Focus. Breathe._

Her hands fumble at the shower's dials, her hands slick with soap and water, the metal sliding fruitlessly under her fingers. The spray from the shower blinds her when she tries to catch a glimpse of her target, only contributing to the panic of the frantic animal rearing in her chest.

Finally, her fingers catch hold of a small raised bump in the metal, and she clings to it like a lifeline. With a sharp twist, the water becomes freezing, as if she's suddenly stepped out from a volcano into an igloo, and the contrast is so drastic that she takes a sharp, shocked breath in and holds it. The lack of oxygen is so sudden that she can feel the pressure dissipate almost instantly. Her legs give way and she falls to the floor of the shower cubicle, panting erratically.

She gets out of the shower quickly after that. And if she's spends another five minutes staring into the mirror, crying the burning hot tears that are six months overdue as she desperately tries, once again, to claw the mercury tears off her face? Well, she thinks she's perfectly entitled to a breakdown right about now. Who cares what anyone else thinks?

* * *

She sleeps for a solid eighteen hours, despite the lumpy feel of the mattress underneath her - it feels like a feather bed compared to the ground of Purgatory.

Thankfully, she's too tired to dream.

Lydia wakes to the sight of Dean already up, lounging back on his bed as he casually cleans his gun. It should probably disturb her that she's not at all worried by this sight, let alone that she doesn't stop to wonder where and when Dean found a gun.

"It calms me," Dean shrugs after a few minutes of silence. She starts, though she shouldn't be that surprised, and throws off the covers with a sheepish look.

"Cleaning your weapon?" she asks, thinking of the knife she carried everywhere in Purgatory with her. She supposes Stiles has the knife in the real world, considering it was his in the first place. Her fingers curl absentmindedly, as if it is still in her hands.

"Yeah." he looks up. "How d'you feel?"

"Just peachy," Lydia snarks. Her gaze slips from Dean's face to the window. The sky is a deep dark blue speckled with bright stars despite the pollution from the motel lights. It mesmerises her - a sight she thought she'd never see again. "I find coming back from the dead a really _refreshing_ experience."

"You get used to it," Dean grins, and she raises her eyebrows skeptically at him.

"I don't want to get used to it. How many times have you even died?"

She throws a pillow at him when he starts counting on his fingers.

"Hey! Are you really gonna physically assault me? The guy who bought you pop tarts?" He throws the pillow back at her, and she snatches it out of the air before it can touch her face.

"What pop tarts?"

"These pop tarts." He shakes the box - which appeared from seemingly nowhere - at her.

"Gimme." she stares him right in the eye, deadly serious.

"You'll have to catch me first."

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Lydia's sat in shotgun of the car they hot-wired, feet up on the dashboard, munching on her third pop tart. She doesn't know how Dean knew that s'mores was her favourite flavour, but she doesn't really care - perfectly content with smirking triumphantly at him as he glowers at the road ahead.

"Stop being bitter. You're _such_ a sore loser, Dean."

"You tricked me."

"No, I just took advantage of my surroundings."

"That's called cheating, Lydia."

In answer, Lydia shoves another pop tart in her mouth, taking care to show just how much she's enjoying it.

"So where are we going?" she asks through a mouthful of food.

"To find Sam," Dean grimaces.

"Why do I feel like I'm missing something here? I thought you'd be happy - you're getting back to Sammy."

"I...I called him this afternoon." he shrugs helplessly, as if at a loss. Lydia stays quiet, taking the time to really look at Dean. He looks so different without layer upon layer of dirt and blood and goo. Even washing in the few streams they found in Purgatory, there was little to nothing any of them could have done to fully rid themselves of their war paint.

He looks younger, she muses. He looks more innocent.

He also looks lost. And broken.

"He's been living with this girl, Amelia, for the past year."

"So he's happy."

"So he didn't look for me. At all."

"Isn't that what you asked him to do?"

"But neither of us ever actually _listens_ , Lydia."

Silence. Lydia hands him a pop tart, which does little to drive away his expression, but he manages a small smile.

"Maybe he thought you were happy, too," she says quietly.

Dean's head snaps to look at her. "Huh?"

"You told me how you died. Killing Dick Roman, right? Saving the entirety of the human race. Dean, Sam didn't look for you because he thought you were in heaven."

The rush of conflicting emotions that passes over Dean's face makes Lydia want to cry, because it occurs to her in that moment that Dean never even considered going to heaven. In all his time saving peoples' lives, sacrificing himself over and over again like it meant nothing, he never considered the possibility of a happy ending.

The silence begins to swell like a void between the two of them, and Lydia quickly fills it in with mindless chatter. She doesn't even keep track of her own words, but it seems to soothe Dean and his racing thoughts, because his jaw and shoulders relax - an almost imperceptible shift which anyone who didn't know what to look for wouldn't see - and the tension in the air slowly dissipates.

Lydia finds herself drifting in and out of sleep, barely noticing the difference between the two, for the rest of the car journey. Dean seems more relaxed every time she looks to him, as if the drive and the road passing underneath him is slowly bringing back better memories. (There _is_ the time she wakes to find him yelling at the absent owner of the car because the only music they have is Taylor Swift and JLS, but she can understand that perfectly).

She finally wakes permanently just as the car is screeching to a halt. She jerks awake at the sudden loud noise, reaching for a knife which is no longer there.

"Easy," Dean tells her, his voice bringing her into the moment. She's not in Purgatory. She's not running for her life anymore.

"Uh, sorry," she shakes her head to clear it.

They've pulled up outside a wooden cabin which, as far as Lydia can tell, is handmade. It's deep in the woods, surrounded by a copse of lush trees which, with their leaves blowing in the wind, captivate Lydia with their varied shades of green and orange.

"Where are we?"

"The cabin belongs to...belonged, to a friend. We can hole up here for a while. Sam should be here soon."

Lydia knows enough not to pry further. There are only so many people Dean Winchester considers a 'friend', so it doesn't take her much time to narrow down the list of people he's talked about and realise he's talking about Bobby Singer, his friend who died last year at the hands of Dick Roman.

Once they're inside, Lydia is surprised by how cosy the cabin is. There's a wood-burning fireplace set into one wall, opposite a threadbare and well-worn couch. There's a functional bathroom, fridge and freezer, and even a couple of beds in rooms off the central one.

In a drawer of a bedside table in one of the rooms, Lydia finds a photo album. She can't resist opening it to flick through whilst Dean is grumbling about the lack of beer in the fridge in the other room.

The photos depict the childhoods of two young boys with their father - playing catch, fixing up their car, learning to shoot, eating and drinking and laughing and looking honest to God _happy_ in almost every single photo.

It takes her five pages of photos to figure out that the man in the ball cap isn't actually Dean and Sam's father.

A car door slams outside the cabin, and everything goes deadly silent within. Lydia freezes for a second, listening as the person outside approaches the door. She hears the barely audible creaks of Dean creeping to hide behind the door - something she wouldn't be able to hear with human hearing - and shoves the album back into place as quietly as she can, taking up her own position hidden within the bedroom.

She should really have her own weapon, she thinks suddenly.

The main door creaks open. Lydia holds her breath in anticipation.

The telltale _oomph_ , followed by scuffling and mild yelling tells Lydia exactly what's happening. She slips into the room silently to find Dean standing over a mountain of a man, shaking a water bottle at him. The man splutters in confusion, but does little to resist Dean's assault, all but confirming for Lydia that this must be the infamous Sammy.

Dean said he was tall, but Lydia hadn't quite believed Dean's exaggerations until now. With his height, his shaggy shoulder-length hair and confused, wide-eyed expression, he really does look like a moose.

Within seconds Dean has finished checking for supernatural signs, and he hands the equipment over to Sam, who refuses - so of course Dean does it himself. Lydia rolls her eyes fondly as she watches, still staying silent. Dean's been looking forward to this moment for a year - she's not about to mess it up for him.

"I don't know whether to give you a hug or take a shower," Sam says first. Lydia decides she likes him.

They hug, and Lydia watches as Dean seems to relax almost completely. She's never seen him so calm and carefree, not even in sleep, and she gains a whole new respect for the younger Winchester brother.

"I can't believe you're alive," Sam gasps. "What the hell even happened?"

"I guess standing too close to exploding Dick sends your ass straight to Purgatory," Dean shrugged nonchalantly, his eyes meeting Lydia's briefly to send her an innocent smirk. She sticks her tongue out at him.

Sam, on the other hand, is frozen. "Pur...Purgatory? You were in Purgatory? The entire year?"

The shock in his voice - the sudden disbelieving realisation - proves Lydia's theory instantly.

"Yeah." Dean's voice is bitter. "Time flies when you're running for your life."

"Well - how'd you get out?"

"I had some help," Dean shrugs, and Lydia guesses its her cue.

Sam spins in surprise to look at her when Lydia clears her throat. _Impeccable hunting instincts_ , she thinks scornfully.

"Who - who're you?" Sam demands, looking between her and Dean with confusion evident on his face.

"Um. I'm Lydia." She looks to Dean momentarily, suddenly unsure of how to approach this hunter who, for all intents and purposes, is a stranger. For all Dean's stories, she's worried how Sam might take her...species. Dean gives her a reassuring nod, which serves to confuse Sam even more. "Lydia Martin," she introduces again, with more confidence.

"Dean?" Sam turns to his brother.

"Lydia's amazing, dude," Dean says, a grin on his face. Lydia mock-glares at him. "She saved my life more times than I can remember in the last six months."

"Really."

"Yeah. You should _see_ her-"

"She's a _teenager_ , Dean."

"She's right here and can hear you talking," Lydia snaps. "And Dean, I want a knife. Unlike _some_ people, mine didn't make the return trip."

Dean sighs, but folds under her gaze and throws her the knife she knows he used to test whether Sam was a shapeshifter. She snatches it easily out of the air, twirling it around in her fingers the way Allison used to. It was a surprisingly difficult move to master, but Lydia had put the hours in regardless of the wounds she sustained.

She grins at the gobsmacked look Sam gives them both.

* * *

They live together for the next month - just the three of them, hiding away in the cabin. Occasionally Dean and Sam pick up a case, and Lydia tags along in the backseat of the car (she gives way to Sam without question when he sits in the passenger seat), offering her knowledge and skills wherever necessary.

It takes her a while to become comfortable around Sam. Maybe its the fact that he's hunter, or the fact that she's become so used to relying on just three people, but she finds herself flinching in his presence, reaching for her knife without thinking, tracking his movement across a room, and automatically scanning him for weapons.

Sam responds in kind, of course. Whilst she is wary that he'll come up behind her and slit her throat at any second, he watches her constantly for fear she's about to shatter his eardrums. When Dean had first broken the news of her species to his brother, there had been a huge argument between them. Even without supernatural ears she could have heard it.

She knows Dean can sense the tension between the two of them still, as he tactfully places himself in between them wherever they go, making sure the two of them are rarely alone together.

"I know you don't trust me."

There. She said it.

They're sitting in the Impala, staking out the house of a family who disappeared unexpectedly three days ago. Dean is asking questions around the town - as reluctant as he was to leave them alone together - and the silence unnerves Lydia.

"Dean trusts you," Sam says, not looking at her.

"That's Dean. You're not the same person, you know."

"I have no reason to trust you," Sam shrugs. "I don't know you."

"Is the fact that I saved Dean's life multiple times not enough for you? Or the fact that he's vouched for me?"

He shifts uncomfortably, finally looking in her direction. "You don't trust me either," he answers.

"That's different. You're a hunter. You have a habit of killing my kind first, and not asking questions later."

Sam snorts incredulously. "Whereas, from what I've read, your kind has a habit of screaming at people to drive them insane, and then eating their brains."

Lydia makes a face, sticking her tongue out in disgust. She pushes down the bristles of annoyance inside her - its not that hard a mistake to make, she supposes.

"There's more than one type of banshee."

"Really?" She's finally caught his undivided attention.

"Of course. Just like there's different types of humans." she says pointedly. "There are dark banshees - like the ones you described. Brain eating, driving people insane, the works. They have a particular hate for the other type of banshee - my type. We're the more traditional ones, the ones you find in folklore, with the screaming when someone is about to die, wandering the moors - that sort of thing. And, yes, I can probably use my voice as a weapon - but I don't go around eating people's brains. Okay?"

Sam is quiet for a while, probably mulling over the information, evaluating it against everything else he knows. She holds back a snort - of all the people she has ever met, she's pretty sure she's an expert on banshee lore. She spent a _long_ time researching it after being nearly strangled by Miss Blake.

"Okay." Sam says, suddenly breaking Lydia from her thoughts.

Lydia finds herself surprised at how quickly he accepts it. If it had taken Dean a while, even when he knew her, shouldn't it take Sam even longer? She stares at him, reevaluating her opinion of him.

Before either of them can say anything, Dean appears, knocking on the window. Lydia almost jumps out of her skin with surprise, glaring at him as he opens the door.

"Scared, Lydia?" he teases, in response to which she aims a hard kick at his shin.

"You find anything?" Sam asks.

"Yeah." Lydia goes to slide out of the driver's seat and into the backseat, but before she can make a move Dean is getting into the back. Both she and Sam give him stunned, confused looks.

"What?" Dean says, shrugging innocently, though he's smirking smugly enough to make Lydia want to punch him in the face. "Lydia's got a driving license."

"Not with me!" Lydia yelps, at the same time as Sam says, "But it's the Impala, man."

"Just drive, Lyds, and I'll talk."

"Where are we going?"

"Head for the woods."

The significance of being allowed to drive the Impala isn't lost on Lydia. She's almost shaking when she turns the keys in the ignition. She's a confident driver, but now every bump in the road feels like a life threatening occurrence.

"You're so lucky," Sam grumbles as they drive. She shoots him a childish grin, and can't help but notice the satisfied smile on Dean's face as he looks between the two of them.

It's been a while since Lydia's driven, so she puts almost all of her focus on the road, only just concentrating on the conversation going on behind her."

"I'm thinking this is a demon possession." Dean says. "According to the neighbours these guys moved here six months ago, kept to themselves a lot. Apparently the dad's been acting strange for a few days. Someone thought they saw him wandering around the woods the other day."

"Is there anything else it could be?" Lydia asks, turning slowly onto the steep road up to the woods.

"Probably," Dean says. "It could be anything."

"So we're just charging in completely blind."

"Not completely blind. I'm sure it's a demon."

"Bet you twenty bucks it's not," Sam challenges.

"Do you guys always bet with your lives?" Lydia asks, amused.

"Not always." Dean protests.

"Just mostly." Sam adds.

Lydia rolls her eyes and shakes her head. "If it turns out not to be a demon, I swear to god Dean I will kill you."

* * *

Of course, it turns out not to be a demon. In fact, it's a ghoul. Probably ate one of the missing family and assumed their identity as a cover, Lydia guesses, though there's no way to guess how long ago.

"You owe me twenty bucks!" Sam yells at Dean as he rolls to one side to avoid the gnashing teeth of the ghoul.

"Shut up, Sam," Dean growls back, charging straight towards the creature. It jumps away at the last second and rounds on him.

Lydia stays out of the action, calculating her next move. Going charging in like Sam and Dean she knows will just get her killed instantly. She grips her machete in her hand - apparently the only way to kill a ghoul is decapitation - and watches as the Winchesters battle vainly with the constantly shifting creature.

She sees her opening when the ghoul sends Sam flying closely after downing Dean. Both of the Winchesters are fallen, and the ghoul can't seem to decide which to kill first. Not hesitating to let it decide, she runs towards it, machete raised above her head.

It turns towards her, and its eyes widen in surprise. An awful cracking sound fills the clearing, like bones snapping, and Lydia slows to a halt in shock as the ghoul shifts before her eyes.

Standing in front of her is Tracy Stewart.

" _What_." For a moment, all sense leaves her. She stands defenseless before the creature, weapon lowered in shock. She blinks, pinches her arm, shakes her head to clear it - but, no. Tracy is still there, looking at her with wide, shaken eyes.

This can't be the ghoul she was about to kill, she reasons with herself. It must be a hallucination, or a dream, or a night terror. They are so many miles away from Beacon Hills - the other side of the country, in fact - that the chances of her running into a ghoul which just happens to have fed on the corpse of a chimera - _that_ chimera - are next to impossible.

"Lydia!" Dean yells, beginning to stand up slowly from where he fell against a tree.

The ghoul opens its mouth; to talk with that voice, to manipulate her with those memories, and-

Lydia swings her machete with as much force as she can muster. She can't help but look away as the body crumples, and the head rolls noisily to rest against a rock further down the slope. She can't look at Tracy's dead body for the third time, knowing that this is the third time she is the reason it is there.

Her stomach heaves, and she empties her breakfast onto the forest floor, acid burning her throat. Her limbs shake as she wipes her mouth.

When she looks up both Dean and Sam are already moving the body, though Dean keeps glancing back at her worriedly as Sam looks between them in confusion.

Later, when they're back in the car - Dean back behind the steering wheel - Lydia looks at her hands, envisioning the red stains she imagines are permanently there. Fate must _really_ hate her.

She's so wrapped up in herself that it takes her almost an hour to notice that they're not on the way back to Bobby's cabin.

"Where are we going?" she asks, trying to glean their destination from the surroundings rushing by outside the window.

"After what just happened, I think you know." Dean sighs. "It's about time you went home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to put a lot of emphasis into colour in this chapter, considering how bleached Purgatory was to the real world and how colour conscious Lydia is I think that would have been one thing she particularly missed. So that's why there's an unnecessary amount of colour adjectives in this chapter.
> 
> Also, I know Dean's ended up in heaven before, but a lot of crap happened between the apocalypse and the leviathans, and Dean Winchester isn't exactly any angel's favourite guy - except Cas, obviously).
> 
> Thanks for reading - please tell me your thoughts in the comments, I love to know what you guys think :D


	7. Important Author's Note

Okay. SO.

First of all, I haven't abandoned this fic. I swear. I haven't even put it on hold/hiatus. I've just kind of... lost inspiration? It's kind of hard to explain. I keep coming back to Chapter 7, adding a couple of words, but then I get stuck. I know exactly what I want to write, where this story is heading - I have the next five chapters planned out, and I know where the plot is going after that, too. I just can't exactly seem to write it.

I thought you guys deserved an update. I'm so sorry for not updating as regularly as I should; thank you so much for all of your comments, they mean so much to me, and they inspire me to write whenever I get a new one.

To try and reinspire myself I'm attempting to write small one shots as a sort of practice to "get the creativity flowing". So I was wondering if you guys would mind sending me prompts for one shots? If you could that would be so amazing. I have a list of all the different fandoms I'm in on my profile, and you can prompt me through my [tumblr](edelwoodsouls.tumblr.com). I'll post anything I write here + on tumblr + fanfic.net.

Thank you to everyone for being so patient. I'm hoping that this horrific case of writers' block will clear up around the time school starts (since homework procrastination always seems to make me want to write), so in theory - best case scenario - is there's only a couple more weeks to wait for the next chapter. I'll delete this author's note when I update. Again, I'm really sorry.

Also I post the first chapter of this fic a year and two days ago! That's so crazy. (Also shows how awful I am at updating considering there's only six chapters...)

-awkwardacity

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fan fiction in a while, and my first time writing in third person present, so reviews and thoughts are much appreciated. Hope you guys enjoy.
> 
> Others notes: I'm from England so most of this is in British English, aside from speech which I have tried to keep accurate (e.g. 'mom'). Also, I began writing this before Teen Wolf 5x07 aired, so though I may include some of the later events it is technically canon divergent from then on.


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